The 13th edition of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair (ICTAF) just closed, with attention being paid to the performance of what has become a landmark fair internationally.
In the context of a contraction of the global art market and stagnating prices, ICTAF has positioned itself as a global player, with strong African representation in its participating galleries and a substantial presence of international curators and collectors.
This edition of the fair was, in common with previous editions, brought together by an overarching curatorial theme. This year was “Listen”, an approach designed to focus more careful attention and concentration on the work, to sort out the noise from the things we should be hearing.
Art fairs rarely take a curatorial approach too far, since participating galleries and dealers are there primarily to sell work they feel will be more commercially accessible. But ICTAF was surprisingly successful in coordinating a more curatorially led offering at this year’s fair, which had much less of a feel of a hodgepodge of artwork designed to appeal.
From a numbers point of view too, the fair continues to grow into positive territory. This year, the fair showcased 126 exhibitors from 34 global cities and 22 countries, featuring more than 490 artists and bringing in more than 34,000 visitors, the highest attendance to date. The significant growth in footfall, alongside strong artwork sales reported across the fair, positions ICTAF as something of an anomaly in global art circles these days.
Generally the global trend has been a contraction in the primary (gallery) market and the secondary (auction) market. This has added significance since much of the pricing of work at the fair is dollar- or euro-pegged, aimed at the travelling international dealer and collector crowd. There were a few sales off the floor that hit seven figures, and the gallerists seemed generally buoyant about sales performance.
A feature of ICTAF has been its expanded city programming, engaging spaces and places around the city that grow the perception of Cape Town as a premium art city. These included pop-up exhibitions, dialogues, art walks and activations across the official gallery and museum spaces, but also new urban spaces and unusual sites for the large contingent of art lovers to be engaging with the artwork.
These included Exploded View, a public art exhibition placing the work of doyen of South African public sculpture Edoardo Villa in dialogue with contemporary sculptors in Blackbrick Hotel, a new hotel development in Gardens with programming that was accompanied by a discussion and walkabouts.
The main private art museum institutions in the Cape, the Norval Foundation and the Zeitz MOCAA, offered related programming and events.
Prominent contemporary sculptor Brett Murray gave a talk on his current solo retrospective at Norval, Wild Life, while just before the opening of ICTAF, the Irma Stern Trust Collection presented the first of a series of long-term exhibitions of Stern’s work at Norval, titled The Berlin Years, curated by the esteemed Karel Nel in collaboration with Norval.
Strauss & Co offered a capsule exhibition at the same time, also drawn from the Irma Stern Collection, of Cape Town Portraits, a marvellous selection of her portraits of local personalities in her lifetime.
Zeitz, close to the fair in the V&A Waterfront, in turn hosted a tribute exhibition to the life and legacy of judge Albie Sachs and staged the latest iteration of its gala event, replete with glittering gowns and celebrities in the museum’s annual fundraiser in honour of deceased former chief curator Koyo Kouoh.
The highly successful Art Walk feature was expanded this year, with many sold-out groups taking mini-tours and educational walkabouts hosted by prominent gallerist Anelisa Mangcu and designer Thebe Magugu.
A major feature of the ICTAF this year was an expanded selection of Art Fair prizes. These are generally selected by an independent jury and are a useful fillip for a budding artist’s career or an indication of where prevailing art world sentiment is lying — a good trendspotting tool, in other words.
The now-established RDC Art Collection Award is presented to an artist who “aligns with the RDC Group’s values and goals”. The property company offers the winner an exhibition in one of its landmark buildings in Cape Town. The winner this year was Mellaney Roberts from Berman Contemporary Gallery.
The Tomorrows/Today Prize was awarded to Nigerian/British artist Chidirim Nwaubani for work which combines art, technology and cultural reclamation. This internationally adjudicated prize is linked to the section of the fair of the same title, geared to leading-edge contemporary practice and thematics.
An interesting new addition to the prize roster this year is the Materiality Prize, in partnership with Homo Faber, which is given to an exhibiting artist from anywhere in the world whose practice reflects innovative materiality, reimagined techniques, and contemporary artisanship.
The prize winner receives an incredible award: an invitation to participate in the Homo Faber Fellowship Masterclass in Venice, Italy, with flight, accommodation and general costs fully covered. The Homo Faber Fellowship is an eight-month international sponsored craft training programme designed for duos of master artisans and emerging talents. Participants develop business and marketing knowledge, as well as design and hands-on practical skills through transmission from one generation to the next.
The new partner in this ICTAF award, Homo Faber, presented by the Michelangelo Foundation, is a cultural movement centred on creative artisans. Its signature projects are education programmes for the next generations, an international biennial celebration and an online guide.
The winner of this inaugural prize is Amy Rusch, exhibiting at Suburbia Contemporary Gallery. Rusch’s work is not only artisanal but works within the important field of critical environmental discourse.
Another important award at the fair is the Investec Emerging Artist Award, awarded this year to Warren Maroon, exhibiting at Everard Read. The award, now in its second year, is positioned to celebrate artists producing high-quality work who are not yet affiliated with a gallery, museum or collection.
Maroon’s sculptures use the detritus of everyday life — memorably the crushed glass from discarded beer bottles — to create new meaning and beauty, as a visual representation of his lived experience and his upbringing in the Cape Flats.
Last, another debutante on this year’s roster of important awards is the ORMS International Photography Prize, won by Sibusiso Bheka from AFRONOVA gallery. The prize also recognises a practice that treats the photographic image not only as documentation but also as a critical, conceptual tool.
The jury-selected winner receives a R20,000 cash prize together with a Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1100 printer, enabling the production of gallery-quality archival prints in up to A2 that honour the integrity of each image.
Along with many photographic contributions to work at and around the fair, the arrival of this prize really advances the case for photography’s place in the South African art landscape, where it has been prominent for some time but perhaps not as highly regarded as other mediums.
The success of the entire awards programme, as well as the huge upswell in general footfall and collector interest across all four days of the ICTAF, marks its position as the landmark art fair in South Africa — and perhaps across the African continent too.
