llErman Contemporary E ISSUE FIVE Published by Schreiber Media / www.schreibermedia.net Ellerman House offers stimulation for all the senses. Graphic Team Ellerman Club Revived The Graphic Club of South Africa was founded Diners Club Wine List Award 2010 by Fred Schimmel in Ellerman House Food & Beverage Manager, MJ Birch, 1970 with the aim of recently brought home another Diners Club Diamond making fine quality art, Award for our comprehensive wine list. This is the by well-known artists third consecutive year Ellerman House has won a available at affordable Diners Club award for our wine list. MJ personally prices. Fred worked compiles an extensive cellar from the best Cape with artists such as Cecil wineries as well as from cellar’s abroad. Our 7,500 Skotnes, Walter Battiss, bottles ensure an excellent match for any meal. Lucky Sibiya and many others to make silkscreen Maurice van Essche works available to Born in Belgium in 1906, members as part of their van Essche lived in Paris, subscription. During the Zaire and South Africa seventies the Graphic during his career as Club produced many an artist. His work as a silkscreens and achieved freelance cartoonist is its aim of spreading evident in his treatment quality South African art of the facial features in into the homes of ordinary many of his paintings. people. The club has now “PeoPle”, says and ‘unobtrusive’ in 3 relaunched with a 21st general manager describing their role in 6 century online format, nick Dreyer. “Once all keeping guests happy. with the same aims: to 7 the boxes have been checked This approach to guests 1 2 4 5 make original silkscreen by guests, relating to the hotel reveals an advanced prints available to people location, facilities and comfort awareness in managing who may not be able to of their rooms, it’s the quality of this world-class afford original art works people who serve them which establishment. by the well-known and becomes the recurring theme “Staff have become established artists. Fred during a stay. accustomed to being At your service: 1 Vicky Dennett 2 Titus Kakova 3 Schimmel’s daughter, Nick and his staff have gone flexible and supportive Austen Johnston 4 Nick Dreyer 5 Lindsy Marais 6 Gail, has partnered out of their way to ensure that when dealing with William Mageqa 7 Cordelia Bauti. with ArtVault in this the hotel becomes not just a requests. Our guests have endeavor and they remain George Pemba destination, but an experience too. diverse interests and committed to the values Despite paintings dating back to the 1930’s, “Guests are here to enjoy our preferences and we tailor-make calibre recognises that wealth and quality cherished by Pemba only came to prominence in 1991 as unique facilities and location our response to ensure we fulfill and success do not equate to the original club. apartheid began to crumble. Originally working and staff are here to anticipate these as best possible,” explains overly stuffy service. Rather, only in watercolour, he switched to oil on the their needs, without them even Nick. the relaxed, confident character For more information go advice of fellow artist Gerard Sekoto. Pemba’s becoming aware of it.” All hotels have a certain of both hotel and people are to www.graphicclub.co.za works relish in portraits and group scenes, based When you speak to staff they character and Ellerman House cherished as the true value of a on memory or imagination. use words such as ‘understated’ is no exception. A hotel of this memorable stay. EllErman HousE 180 Kloof Road BantRy Bay Cape town 8005 South afRiCa PO Box 515 Sea point 8060 telephone +27 21 430-3200 fax +27 21 430-3215 email : [email protected] > www.ellerman.co.za Kevin Roberts THE WEFT, THOSE varied HORIzontal THREADS that provide the colour, pattern and the pictorial surface to woven cloth, can be seen as the figures, images, objects and surroundings that Roberts so painstakingly depicted, and the symbolic meanings that they suggest. Roberts, who died in August 2009, was careful not to interpret his own work too closely, believing that there must be space for each viewer to construct his or her own meanings from the paintings. He was quoted as saying that his paintings seek to evoke a sense of mystery that resonates with the viewer or to suggest a poetic promise of meaning, but never closure. However, recurring symbols provide abundant material for interpretation. Many works show a robed woman, sitting or standing quietly or engaged in some activity, yet always still, calm and tranquil. She is an archetype, not a specific person, a Madonna or mother, sister of daughter, a teacher or a bearer of new life, or a metaphor for some aspect of the human condition, such as human spirituality, the unconscious, the meditative and the instinctive. She is juxtaposed with myriad other signs: signs of the mundane, everyday world, such as plastic chairs, crates and bowls; allusions to Africa, such as enclosures made from thatch or sticks; Above: Nature Nurture. Below: Detail from Messages of Rain. Below right: Robert’s allows viewers their own meaning. references to Europe or the East in roses, patterned hangings, embroidered cloths or trellises. Through these images, Roberts alluded to various cultural traditions. One is the tradition of western painting that peaked during the Italian Renaissance (the bird, for example, may represent the angel of the annunciation), as well as part of ancient Greece, Rome, the Gothic and Middle East. Traces can be found of Nigerian Ife figures, Picasso’s Mediterranean women, the painting on Fulani cattle, and many other visual sources. Equally important are symbols of nature such as flowers, cows, birds, landscapes, water in many forms, fossils, local fauna and flora, such as acacia trees and buck. Readings of these are varied and potentially complex. For example, the bird is often a messenger, of rain, of change or of the passing of time. The cow long fascinated Roberts, because of the intimate and long relationship between man and cattle in Africa. The cow could signify possession and wealth or, placed on a palette or trestle, suggest an object of worship or the female principle. Water is a sign of plenty, luxury and ease, or of spiritual renewal. It also represents the female principle and the subconscious. The landscapes are typical of South Africa with its grasslands, thorn bush or ploughed fields, and give a sense of place. Roberts responded to nature, to his urban environment, to art and to the cultures that exist around him, weaving them into his highly personal paintings and sculptures. All these symbols resonate, reflect or reinforce each other. They give rise to more abstract considerations, which may be specific to an individual work, but which, taken as a whole, often construct meditations about the relationship of man to nature, the tendency and ability to control and tame nature, the tension between containment and freedom, the cyclical passage of time, the workings of memory and the interrelationships between nature and culture. – Ingrid Stevens all ss Clive Ha Above: The artist at work on a commissioned bust for an American banker. Top right: Madonna of Muizenberg. Above right: Daughters of the British Empire. Jean Doyle Below: The Pursuit of Wisdom. THE ELEMENTS OF My SCULPTURES are abandon my student years and invent my own scavenged from many different sources. These kind of creativity. may include a Bob Dylan lyric, the soaring My style has therefore evolved through the notes of Sibongile Khumalo’s powerful voice, process of work and reflection and is my an innocent bystander who unwittingly poses version of the truth. I delight in the volume for me or the Duchess of Kent’s hat. I am a and bounty of my figures, whether I am hunter/gatherer who finds rich pickings at every translating famous nudes from historical turn and my influences range from artists, paintings into bronze and endowing them writers, movie-makers; those people who with incongruous attributes, or depicting self review my work and those who interpret it. At consciously well-nourished and thoroughly times my sculptures themselves betray me and contemporary females. I have a natural are not loyal to my intention. They masquerade inclination towards volume; extravagant in fancy dress and I can never, therefore, claim and immoderate polished surfaces relieved my sculptures as wholly my own. by areas of intricate detail – bold women, I grew up in a home where creativity was a swelling with sensuality bearing an arsenal part of everyday existence. My father was of jewellery. A lurking element of camp a painter as well as being a craftsman of reinforces this hyperbole. considerable talent and I was exposed to The clay with which I sculpt is sympathetic, painting from an early age, as well as leather unresisting and forgiving: it doesn’t hold tooling, wood carving, pottery and carpentry. me to any promises or make any demands. I As a child I took little pleasure in toys, but completely fill my allotted space with it, like would sit beneath his easel making ‘frames’ filling an entire canvass with paint or a whole for his paintings from old wooden fruit boxes. page with writing. In our foundry, using skill The Frank Joubert Art School nurtured my and craftsmanship and sometimes feats of creativity during my school years then later, engineering, we transform this responsive as a student, I was most influenced by Stephen and malleable material into hard, resisting, de Villiers, who gave me the fundamentals burnished bronze. It becomes defiant, exists of picture-making and a life-long interest in independently and alludes to indestructibility.