SOLO STUDIOS. Intimate art encounters in the Riebeek Valley. LUCINDA JOLLY reviews
THE last weekend of July premiered Solo Studios, an art event of galleries and artist’s studios in the Riebeek Valley (Riebeek Kasteel and Riebeek Wes). The success of the event has put the valley firmly on the art map. The artist and artisans (brewers, winemakers, bakers) of Riebeek got together to jointly produce the first “intimate art encounters”.
Everyone was a little afraid that no-one would pitch. As it happened the computer system nearly crashed with all the pre- booking traffic - the only way attendees could attend. A ticket allowed entry to 17 artist studios with the artists in attendance to chat with, drink a glass of wine or lemonade and nibbles.
A mere 80 km drive from Cape Town – or an hour and a half- through lyrical Swartland countryside was a great mood setter for the Solo Studios event. Late rains and unusual stretches of sun combined to create painterly bursts of emerald wheat fields and the sudden rush of citrus yellow of canola fields so sharp they made your eyes water. All lyrically set against distant clichéd smoky blue mountains and closer hills nubbly with wooliness.
Although not limited to, the landscape prelude also provided insight into where artists and photographers gathered local inspiration. Starting in the Kasteel with Cows in the Spotlight one of the photographic highlights by photographer and printer William Walker also the owner of the photographic gallery Pictorex .Walker’s photograph captured a group of regular cows huddling characteristically together on the high point of a shorn field made golden from the sudden post rain spill of theatrical sunlight giving the scene a restrained contemporary Baroque feel.
It’s classic decisive moment stuff where light, form and time have conspired to shift the ordinary into the sublime and invite the viewer to look anew at in land and creatures with a kind of wonder.
Landscapes may accommodate, and artist’s works are accessible but normally artist’s studios are hermetically sealed spaces. The lure of Solo Studios lies partly in the break with the norm. Visitors could “koeleloor” at the spaces that gave rise to artworks and meet the captive creator in situ.
Art works from the Sulger-Buel Lovell gallery found a perfect fit in the spacious, light home of director Tamzin Lovell Miller beautifully positioned on a hill facing mountains. The initial overall feel of this show was colourful and playful with an edge. Take Zimbabwean artists Wycliffe Mundopa and Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude’s paintings which give voice to the Zimbabwean ghettos and those most at risk, woman and children. The overall colourfulness was weighted by the presence of black and white in the mixed media works by Guinea-Bissauan Nu Barreto’s where snakes and ladders is referenced but shifts into a deadlier scenario when played by people and unfair systems and the doccie styled black and white photographs of David Lurie.
Neil Wright provided light relief with his complexly designed, painted tondos and prints featuring bottle tops and Amazi containers which poke fun at the knock and drop leaflets from dubious “Dr’s” who promise a range of cures from impotence to winning the lottery.
A trip to landscape artist Jenny Parsons both to see her paintings and her beautifully situated historic house and studio was another highlight. Parsons is recently back from visiting Monet‘s gardens at Givernchy, so talk turned to the much misunderstood Impressionists and their brilliance and Peter Doigt who she admits is an influence.
It was interesting to see what Parsons had above her work desk- among her reference postcards were some Paul Klee’s, and a yellow Mark Rothko. Parsons works are pure delicious smeary painterliness intensely packed into a small fame. And is she ever the master of the tricky green pigment infused with the lusciousness of the tropical and the not so tropical.
A high beamed room is the studio of the refreshingly unassuming Tamlin Blake who unpacked the mysteries of her tapestries made with the thread of dyed and spun newspaper strips. Here the bones of the weaving process are exposed for examination. Blake is like a modern day Grimm’s fairy tale character wielding a spindle and holding a fascination with the last book of the Bible, Revelations. Not in its religious context, but for its stories and characters which feature in her weavings. For Blake “tapestry itself is traditionally a form of storytelling”. Here process is queen, equivalent to slow cooked food movement where nothing can be rushed.
Time didn’t allow a visit to Greta McMahon‘s studio. But I am familiar with her highly abstract personal work which pushes both the boundaries of the material and subject matter creating and exploring a universe of archetypes and otherness, allowing the viewer the possibility of entry.
Often the economic divide in small towns is visible, the Riebeek Valley is no different. Its encouraging to see that The People’s Gallery (a pop up affair in the tourism office) operates as a platform for emerging artists focusing on disadvantaged communities. Trade was in progress and a sculptor and a painter were busy at work. The People’s Gallery is in the process of linking artists from this gallery with more established ones. A percentage of the Solo Studios proceeds will be allocated to an Arts Development Trust to facilitate a sustainable growth programme for The People’s Gallery.
Pencil this event in for next year.
l solostudios.co.za