FNB Art Joburg did not disappoint

FNB Art Joburg was cunningly situated as the centrepiece of a two-week citywide celebration of art entitled Open City, which continues for the rest of this week, with a number of activations, film and art-related book events on the cards, although admittedly probably only for diehards by this stage.

Art Joburg is generally a barometer for the local art market, given that its Cape Town counterpart draws more of a tourist and international audience, especially post-Covid-19. In pure numbers terms at least, the market is once more heating up, with more than 11,000 visitors through the doors over the three days. Concrete sales information is harder to come by from gallerists and organisers, but the feeling on the floor was one of cautious optimism.

“We had a lot of interest and a lot of activity through our booth on HUB,” said Art Joburg stalwart Valerie Kabov, founder and director of Harare’s First Floor Gallery.  

Openings at art events always set the tone, and the 2022 iteration was an undoubted triumph. Thursday night’s VIP preview had a packed house, social distancing was a distant memory, fantastic food was consumed and Krone bubbles flowed freely the whole night. Artists, collectors and scenesters abounded.

The seemingly complicated arrangement of six different curated sections to the fair’s offering was in fact rather simpler to navigate, with a standard arrangement of gallery booths maximising the exhibition space, and the central atrium of the Sandton Convention Centre’s cavernous exhibition hall dominated by sculptural works and installations under the hashtagable rubric “MAX”. Highlights here were a bronze sculpture by Zanele Muholi presented by her gallery, Stevenson, a magisterial work by El Anatsui, Drying Line, from the Goodman Gallery, and a characteristic pair of wings made from domestic iron plates by SMAC’s Usha Seejarim, who has another public version of the work installed in the Rosebank art precinct.

Around the MAX installations, galleries exhibited what was on the whole a selection of greatest hits as gallerists dipped their toes in the post-Covid-19 waters. There were curated exceptions of course — Gallery Momo offered a charming showcase of work by Durant Basi Sihlali, and blank projects offered its usual elegantly crafted small show, this time of work by photographer Sabelo Mlangeni.

A highlight was the ETC curated section, of print and publishing houses. The tiny Cape Town based South Atlantic Press excelled with a beautiful selection of prints by prominent artists who were exhibiting elsewhere on the fair in more familiar mediums, and specialist publisher Iwalewa books showcased their art catalogues and held a signing of their recent book on the Bauhaus centenary in SA.

The ORG section, devoted to specialised art institutions, was a very pleasantly cerebral surprise, with a showcase for the consistently interesting work being done at William Kentridge’s incubator The Centre for the Less Good Idea, the international gallery and curatorial collective South South, and the important academic and archival work from Javett UP, who brought the current exhibition, Bongi Dhlomo’s Yakhal’Inkomo.

Apart from the heavyweight talks programme AUX, a focus of interest was the incubator section at the fair, titled gallery LAB. This had most of the gallery presence at Art Joburg from the rest of Africa, mostly sub-Saharan, and it was encouraging to see continental trends and the continued opening up of Joburg to the African art market.

FNB Art Joburg's founding director Mandla Sibeko comments: “I’m particularly pleased to be involved in the South African art scene in person again. It is one of the most dynamic in the world, it’s young, it’s vibrant and it’s black and that’s very unique given our history. A lot of artists didn’t get the opportunity to go to art school because participating in  art was a matter of privilege but with this cohort of young artists who showed this year, I saw a use of materials and language that is so refreshing and different from anywhere else in the world, so when you do come here to Johannesburg you’ll be completely inspired because it’s a different take now. Johannesburg in itself has a very exciting culture scene, the culture producers here are shaping a new discourse and reflecting the pulse  of change. Of the many cities you can visit in the world, you’ll never get the feeling you get when you come to Joburg. It feels like the city is shaping up to be what people like Mandela wanted the country to be.”

As qualified as it has to be after the two years of cultural and economic isolation most of the world has suffered, the 2022 FNB Art Joburg experience was a positive one, as the city welcomes back its beating art heart.