Investec Cape Town Art Fair’s big birthday bash

Generally acknowledged as the largest international contemporary art fair in Africa, the Investec Cape Town Art Fair (ICTAF) staged its largest-ever edition this year, with final visitor tallies of more than 25,000 over its three days, including 6,700 VIPs and 106 exhibitors from 18 countries, including an extensive pan-African contingent.

While official sales figures are not usually provided, anecdotal evidence from the floor suggests a return to commercial success for ICTAF. Gallerist Charl Bezuidenhout of Worldart gallery in Cape Town noted a brisk trade, even in the days leading up to the opening on February 17. Encouragingly, he said, most sales were coming from local collectors. At Zimbabwe’s First Floor Gallery, helmed by frequent visitor to the SA art fair circuit Valerie Kabov, work by headline Zimbabwean artist Grace Nyahangare had sold out by the second day.

Among the international contingent, ArtCo gallery from Germany was seeing much interest in photographic work by DRC-based photographer Stephane Gladieu, whose book ‘Homo Detritus’ documents the shamanistic performance costumes of DRC artists, made from recycled and scrap materials. A neat tie-in occurred at the hugely popular Artist’s Party in Constantia after the fair’s first night closing, where the artists, in costume, performed live on stage to everyone’s great delight. The party also saw Western Cape premier Alan Winde take to the stage as part of the welcoming delegation, providing some political endorsement of the art economy of a kind sadly lacking elsewhere.

While the highlights reel of work on the fair itself is extensive, with representation and crowded stands for every major gallery in SA and many further afield, it is fruitless to single out individual works as being representative. The two major prizes on offer — for best artist on one of the central, ‘emerging artist’ curated shows-within-the-show, titled Tomorrows/Today, and for best presented booth space, went respectively to Cape Town-based tapestry artist Talia Ramkilawan and to Cape Town-headquartered Ebony/Curated gallery. One slight cavil would be that the curated subsections of the fair this year, including an anticipated SOLO section curated by arts writer and curator Sean O’Toole, tended to fade into the general layout of the fair itself and were difficult to pick out of the thrum and noise of the exhibition booths.

 A popular addition to programming this year was a series of ‘studio visits’ and walkabouts staged by artists and gallerists for collectors either at thefair itself or in gallery spaces in the city. Bespoke events by Penny Siopis at Stevenson, Sue Williamson at Goodman Gallery and Jody Paulsen at SMAC were all booked out.

Away from the fair’s main activities at the Convention Centre there were many intriguing and worthy exhibitions and events all over the city. Designed to coincide with the ICTAF, the career survey of respected video and installation artist and UCT academic Berni Searle at the sophisticated private museum the Norval Foundation was well worth a visit.

With enough space and curatorial expertise from Liese van der Watt and Owen Martin, Searle’s internationally renowned video work especially was well staged. At A4 Arts Foundation, an arts education, incubator and project space in the city, curator Josh Ginsberg put together an intellectually engaging and cleverly conceived international group show called ‘The Future is Behind Us’. A highlight of this was another view — and listen to — James Webb’s much loved and globally travelled sound work ‘Prayer’.

Saturday night, the last official night of the fair, saw a celebratory installation event on top of a high-rise parkade in the city. ‘Exhibition: Match’, curated by Stevenson’s Alex Richards and Phokeng Setai, brought artists, gallerists, curators and writers together for a five-a-side football tournament high above central Cape Town, surrounded by three video installations on loop playing on the walls surrounding the football pitch. Fun, inventive and enterprising, with some international precedent and artistic heft in the works on show, it pretty much summed up the vibe at the 10th edition of ICTAF.     

www.investeccapetownartfair.co.za