EXHIBITION VIEWS:
INVERTING THE PYRAMID
curated by Jonathan Garnham
10/06/2010 - 10/07/2010
|
|
|
|
Artwork details [with artists' statements in square brackets where available].
1. Sanell Aggenbach. Best – The Belfast Boy (2010). Oil on paper. 510 x 610mm. R15 500 [Gifted, extravagant, pretty, son, volatile, alcoholic, arrogant, profane, womaniser, night clubber, gambler, winger, dandy, inspirational, genius, celebrity, original, brilliant, Fith Beatle, fast, vain, father, Irish, desperate, legend.]
2. Matthew Blackman. Found. Not Jules Rimet Under a Bush (2010). Car Bonnet, Acid, Urine, Plant, Flag. R2 000 [The figure on the bonnet is a detail from the current FIFA World Cup Trophy. The previous cup, known as the Jules Rimet Trophy, was stolen in 1966 shortly before the World Cup took place. It was later found by a dog called Pickles under a bush.]
3. Anja de Klerk. Inverting the Pyramid (2010). Mirror gold vinyl.
4. Adriaan de Villiers. 2010 Soccer Stadium (2010). Earthenware. 600 x 450 x 360mm. R2 500
5. Pierre Fouché. Untitled (2010). Wall drawing and found images of football players kissing (printed on green card).
6. Corlia Harmsen. Inverting the Pyramid: Leveling the playing field (2010). Three soccer balls. Dimensions variable. [In January 2010 I bought a soccer ball. The first one ever, I figured it being 2010 and all. In February 2010 the soccer ball was completely deflated. As it turns out, my five (rescued from rural parts in South Africa) dogs are enthusiastic soccer players. Since January 2010 they have deflated three soccer balls in total.]
7. Trasi Henen. WHACK! (2010) Soccer ball piñatas: paper maché, paint. [Objective: Hit the piñata with the vuvuzela until it bursts.]
8. Emile Kelly. Gerry – Hackney Marshes, 24/01/2010 (2010). C-type prints. [The ongoing Hackney Marshes project focuses on the referees of amateur Sunday league football in East London. The Sunday league on Hackney Marshes, which boasts 88 pitches, the largest concentration of full size football pitches anywhere in the world, was first established in 1949. Every weekend the pitches become East London in microcosm. They are full of people, from diverse backgrounds, who have come together to participate in The Beautiful Game. Although it would be disingenuous to suggest that this coming together is always a harmonious affair. Ball kicking games have existed in many different cultures, worldwide, for thousands of years; they are likely the result of a basic human desire to play. However, the codified set of rules we know today emerged from the Public Schools of England in the mid to late 19th Century, and the game is therefore imbued with the same principles of European modernity which did so much to shape the world today. With this in mind, I decided to focus on the individuals who choose to give up their Sunday’s, every week, come rain, sleet or snow, to ensure these rules are adhered to. In doing this I hope to highlight a tension between the standardised rules of the game, and the individuality of the human beings who choose to participate..]
9. Andrew Lamprecht. Swedish Bum (2008). Inkjet print. Edition of 8 + 1.
10. Moshekwa Langa. Magaola (2009). Digital print.
11. Bettina Malcomess (with Louis Mira, Ludwig Gericke, Dorothee Kreutzfeldt & others). The Millenium Bar (2007 onwards). (Photograph: architectural drawing by Ludwig Gericke). Installation material: From the Huguenot Hall: Doors, brass leather, wood (1960’s), Jeppe Synagogue: lectern (demolished 2008), Troyeville Anglican Church: Pew (stripped 2009), Brandwag Hotel, Worcester: door- glass, blackwood (approx 1910), Farmhouse, Hermanus: Screen doors, Hillbrow Bloodbank: doors, chairs, light fittings (stripped, 2009), Staircase Balustrade (provenance unknown), Doors (miscellaneous). Dimensions variable. [The Millennium Bar is a temporary structure built out fragments collected from building and demolition sites over the last 3 years. During the course of the 2010 world cup the bar is being assembled and re-configured at different sites, both directly and indirectly related to the soccer. The parts it is made from remain whole, recognizable and distinguishable, and where possible with a record of their provenance.The Millennium Bar’s continual reconfiguration and inevitable fragmentation set it up as mimicking and interrupting the goal driven development that defines the World Cup project. It wants to be a pavilion. But it mimics informal building processes; fashioning a structure like a collage. Unfolding as a series of events the bar invites collaborators, customers and bar staff to ‘wear’ the bar, to perform the space. The Millennium Bar is now.]
12. Catherine Ocholla. The Ringmaster (2010). Acrylic. R2 500
13. Sean O’Toole. #1 (Six Onomatopoeic Exercises) (2010) Vinyl-cut lettering, voice. Dimensions variable [Saturday afternoon near Thembisa. Pirates versus Sundowns. A self-confident man in an orange fleece sweater strides across the fuel station’s forecourt towards a replica AC Cobra. He digs into a pocket, hops into the open-top sport car. Its guttural breathing attracts an admiring young couple. The man in the fleece pumps the accelerator. The couple grin. Shortly afterwards an indigo blue VW Chico pulls up alongside a fuel pump, its occupants all wearing black and white football shirts. A backseat passenger thrusts a stunted white vuvuzela from the window. It makes a sound. Here’s the problem: how does a writer render sound? Inaccurately... This work offers six alternative onomatopoeic renderings of the sound issuing from a vuvuzela. None are correct, each a possibility: Proposal A: BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! Proposal B: VUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU! Proposal C: BZZZZ-BZZZZZ-BZZZZZ-BZZZZZZ! Proposal D: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Proposal E: PRRRRRR-TOOOO-TOOOO-TOOO! Proposal F: FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! In the spirit of John Baldessari, who in the 1970s sang several of Sol Lewitt’s aphoristic sentences on conceptual art, I will activate these comic book renditions of the vuvuzela’s sound, albeit without the aid of the plastic trumpet, at an undisclosed time.]
14. David Sazo Bush. 1978 (2010). DVD. [1978. The year Nottingham Forest won the League and League Cup double in their first year after promotion, and Ipswich won the FA Cup.The year Scotland went to Argentina for the World Cup, and manager Ally McLeod took the injured Gordon McQueen to the tournament even though he would only be fit for the semi-final.Anything was possible that summer, as we sang along with Rod Stewart and the Tartan Army.It all ended in tears of course, but not before Archie Gemmill scored one of the great goals in World Cup history.
It was also the year Panini launched their stickers album on the UK for the first time. ‘Football 1978’ comprised the 22 First Division and 10 Scottish Premier Division teams in full, as well as team shots of the 22 Second Division teams. There were over 500 stickers needed to complete the album, and we collected them with even more fervour than kids collecting them today. The slide show features all the headshots from the very album I collected and completed during that year.It was a time before full corporate sponsorship and the total makeover of the footballer. Football was no longer a local game, but it was far from being the globalised and commoditized product of today. In England, a ‘cosmopolitan’ side meant having a lot of Scottish players in the squad, and non-white players were very few and far between (Viv Anderson, Laurie Cunningham and not forgetting Sammy Chung, manager of Wolves). We weren’t bothered with the accessories or branding, and we didn’t notice the hair and crooked teeth. Things were changing of course, in that 1970’s way – we never knew which boots Kevin Keegan wore but we knew he used Brut 33. But in the main, these men looked impossibly old to us, and looking back now they seem a different species altogether.]
15. Linda Stupart. Pretty when you cry (2010) Watercolour & glitter paper on fabriano. R2 500
16. Jasper Walgrave. FCB (2010). Found image of Club Brugge FC, c.1960's. [The Saturday morning edition of the Flemish paper 'de Standaard' had a specific prediction segment every week, and helping my dad filling it in must be among my earliest memories... Invariably, we'd predict 'Club' to win. This picture is part of the earliest days of the glory period, (losing to Liverpool in European finals in two consecutive years), with big heroes like Robbie Rensenbrink (the guy who is 4th from left looks like him, but it isn't him. The parting of his hair went the other way) who was part of Holland's '74 World Cup finalists, and Raoul Lambert (7th from left), of whom my dad said: "He'd score straight from the corner kick, go to the ref himself to say the ball was outside of the corner triangle when he'd taken the corner; the ref would have him take it again, and he'd score it straight again..." Not sure if that's true, though. Allez de Blauw met Zwart.]
17. Ed Young. The European collector who could gaze uninterruptedly (2002). Video. Edition of 5 + 1 AP. R35 000 [Naked children play in a park and enact sexual practices with plastic soccer balls. The video is filmed from an apartment block far away and the use of digital zoom is applied in order to capture the images. This, together with the amplification of the in-camera noise creates a sick atmosphere.]
Artworks not illustrated above:
Robert Sloon. The Meaningful Game. (2010). Inkjet Print. 201 x 128mm. Edition of 10. R750
Sean O’Toole. #2 (Ronaldinho’s Smile) (2010) Discarded phone directory, pen. [In April 2006 I was invited by filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter to join his crew on the Malian leg of his documentary 7915 km (2008). I rendezvoused with Geyrhalter in Kayes, a small town on the western border on the country. My arrival was met with exhausted disinterest, the film crew sapped after a trying month in Mauritania. To make matters worse, my brief was confusing. ‘Write an artistic response,’ stated my Beninese-French intermediary. How? It was my first time in West Africa. Unclear what to do, I decided to wander off and chat with the town’s many truckers, also follow the cows paraded through town every evening. A week in, the film shoot was postponed, Geyrhalter and crew returning to Europe, via Dakar. This work is my belated artistic response: a continuous rewriting of a piece of journalism I produced describing my experiences and originally published in the Sunday Times in 2008. Perhaps in the rewriting I will finally fulfil the unrealised contractual term – making art.
Corlia Harmsen. There is no “I” in team (trilogy) (2010). Digital print on archival paper. (Images taken with a Disposable camera) 450mm x 250mm. R2 000.
Blett Sapper. Fick Fufa (2010). T-shirts. R120
