MASTER OF ARTS IN FINE ARTS ELIZABETH CASTLE Encounters With the Controversial Teaching Philosophy of the Johannesburg Art Foundation in the Development of South African Art During 1982 - 1992 Student number 739110 COPYRIGHT © E CASTLE 0 DECLARATION I Elizabeth Castle hereby declare that all the research is my own and to my knowledge has not been done before in this format. I also declare that all the interviews with artists and Council Members of the Johannesburg Art Foundation have been conducted by me. The work on the exhibition Controversial ways of seeing had written consent from the artists and owners. Finally the display of original archive material and the inserts in the paper have written consent from the custodian of the archive. Signed by Candidate Elizabeth Castle …………………………………. Signed by Supervisor David Andrew……………………………………. 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION 1 ABSTRACT 3 INTRODUCTION 4 CHAPTER 1: CONTEXTUALISING THE JAF WITHIN A DISLOCATED SOCIETY 6 CHAPTER 2: ANOMALIES IN THE TEACHING PHILOSOPHY 21 CHAPTER 3: VISIONS FOR A DIVIDED SOCIETY 35 CHAPTER 4: REFLECTIONS ON THE EXHIBITION 46 Controversial ways of seeing CONCLUSION 68 BIBLIOGRAPHY 71 INTERVIEWS 74 ABBREVIATIONS 75 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 75 APPENDIX A: Questions for interviews 76 APPENDIX B: Key newspaper articles (Insert) APPENDIX C: Ainslie’s personal notes and correspondence (Insert) APPENDIX D: Interview transcripts 77 APPENDIX E: Catalogue (Insert) APPENDIX F Attached: Video of interviews and artists works 2 Abstract The Johannesburg Art Foundation (JAF), founded in 1982 by Bill Ainslie, maintained a teaching philosophy which opposed any form of discrimination and stressed that art education should be a possibility for everyone. There was no prescribed curriculum and the programme was not dependent on an external educational authority. I argue that particularly in the decade 1982-1992, the South African apartheid government's educational policy towards cultural activities was prescriptive, stifling and potentially paralysing for many artists. Nevertheless, the teaching at the JAF sustained a flexibility and tolerance of ideas combined with an emancipatory ambition that promoted exchange. The philosophy was infused with a social justice and a political activism agenda squarely in opposition to the separatist apartheid education laws. This study contextualizes the impact and efficacy of the teaching approach at the JAF in terms of its intellectual, social and political perspectives during the years 1982-1992. This teaching approach prompted acerbic encounters within the competing systems of formal and informal institutions. It is this controversial anomaly signifying elements of collision in the pursuit of developing modernism that are investigated to some extent. Personal involvement as an artist and teacher, during the period 1982-1992, allowed my contribution and participation in the development of the teaching philosophy. The paucity of available literature on the subject has stimulated a comprehensive preliminary investigation of the way in which the JAF cultivated alternative educational policies. The individual methodologies and personal experiences extracted from interviews with artists, Council Members and members of staff are documented in order to provide a detailed characterisation of the values of the JAF. In addition, original documentation representative of the genealogy of the JAF forms part of the curatorial practice for the exhibition Controversial ways of seeing at the Bag Factory Gallery. The JAF declined from 1992 and finally ceased to exist in 2001. 3 Introduction The JAF was an informal art centre where creative endeavour was available to everyone. The centre was wholly in opposition to the racially discriminatory education laws of the country and the teaching therefore established a contentious milieu. The process of investigating the teaching philosophy at the JAF draws out key-points of the challenges that emerged over aesthetic representation during a time of corresponding political turbulence. My vision towards mapping the flow of the narrative required revisiting memory through oral testimony and the sourcing of fragments of archival material all of which ultimately relate to the visual argument in the exhibition Controversial ways of seeing. In this way the exhibition revisits the past and supports this mutability of memory revealing individual perceptions that can be contradictory, inconsistent and nostalgic. Accordingly, while memory is elemental to the resource of oral history it poses both opportunities and dilemmas for the veracity of the interpretation. To quote historian Ronald Grele, on the importance of oral history, he maintains that, “Oral history holds great promise for the increase of our knowledge of the past and how the past lives on in the present” (Preface to the second edition Envelopes of Sound, xvi 1991). In this respect the oral history mined and researched, during the past years 2012-2014, increases the knowledge and history of the JAF by accessing both the past and the present. The conflicting elements are supported in the exhibition Controversial ways of seeing, where the visual narrative underpins the mutability. During the years 1982-1992 the incapacitating apartheid system compromised cultural expression. Paradoxically the research shows how these difficult conditions made it possible for the JAF to develop amid the traumatic and destructive events of the years leading up to the state of emergency, State of Emergency (SOE) in 1960 and in the 1980’s, and democratic transition. My teaching involvement at the JAF began after graduating from the University of South Africa (UNISA) with a BAFA degree under Professor Alan Crump. During the years 1982 -1992 I had the privilege to teach with many of the protagonists in this study. Working with people from different circumstances, consistently supplemented by discussion groups and in-house seminars, broadened our mutual experiential teaching capacity. Diverse approaches were, however, centred on the premise that there was no specific or confining curriculum and the philosophy focussed on flexibility and experimentation in a non-racial space diametrically opposed to the prevailing apartheid education laws. Additionally, personal access to original archival documentation concerning the inception of the JAF contextualises the need and origin for its formation in the cultural sector during the years 1982-1992. The intention is to initiate a critical awareness of the political and cultural manifestations that took place at the JAF. Mongane Wally Serote, now an honorary Professor at UNISA, who was born in Sophiatown and attended school in Alexandra was a political activist and close friend of Ainslie. He was exiled for his political involvement. When Serote returned from exile he was elected to the JAF Council. 4 In conversation, he affirmed that the importance of the space occupied by the JAF was that it managed to persevere amid extreme circumstances and that its philosophy was predicated on an “expression of the human spirit no matter what happened around it” (Serote 2013, pers. comm. 3 April). Embracing this view Gardiner gives his considered opinion: …[O]ur country was in exile from the greater world. Wally [Serote] and Bill *Ainslie+ kept in touch across the “frontiers” and made changes to many lives. We, as a country were offered a chance to join in again. Because of people like them, changes started before 1994. They were both at the heart of working at keeping the humanness in place. (Gardiner 2013 pers. comm. 3 March. Amended 20 October) Serote affirmed the need for a place for a humane and essentially democratic learning environment. He said, We need to make space for people who are creative. At the present moment people were thinking of the struggle. The struggle had blood in it, has violence, has guns, has jail, has exile, that’s not all there is, there is something underneath the unbreakable spirit of human beings. (Serote 2013) The emphasis of the exhibition Controversial ways of seeing is on Bag Factory Studios affiliated artists and those artists who continue to work in the studios. By challenging the apartheid racist laws many of these artists were ground breaking teachers at the JAF. Accordingly, the exhibition of selected work, recorded interviews and historical documentation reflects the important connection with the JAF and the endeavours of Bill Ainslie, David Koloane and Robert Loder, who were instrumental in acquiring the Bag Factory premises for artist's studios and gallery space. The Bag Factory Gallery is, therefore, the preferred space for the exhibition Controversial ways of seeing. The exhibition serves to make a definitive visual statement about the historical link between the JAF and the Bag Factory. The defiant teaching philosophy at the JAF sustained an unequivocal ethos, during the years 1982-1992 and its closure was in the physical sense only. Its influence endures through many of the artists identified in this paper who have continued to pursue the values that emanated from that shared environment. Contextualizing the JAF as a centre of resistance at the time, therefore, is central to the exhibition Controversial ways of seeing. Importantly the exhibition revisits the misconceptions and criticisms directed towards the ethos and the intentions of the JAF. The archival material in the form of original correspondence and newspaper articles serves to landmark this argument. Furthermore, the exhibition indicates the narrative