This post is probably related to this other post about the lack of reviews of emerging artists in joburg…
I can’t decide whether I find it amusing or enraging that in art | south africa’s big issue on “power and influence,” they’ve almost completely written themselves out. To quote Sean O’Toole’s (the editor’s) brief introduction:
Why embark on such a self-reflexive enquiry into power and influence? In his book, The Culture Game, Olu Oguibe remarks: “Ironically, the contemporary art ‘world’ is one of the last bastions of backwardness in the west today, which makes it an uneven playground, a formidable terrain of difficulty for artists whose backgrounds locate at the receiving end of intolerance.” Substitute the geographies – west for South Africa – and Oguibe’s statement retains a compelling significance. Of course, anyone who routinely engages the South African art world will know this already, that it is a formidable terrain of difficulty, one in which “institutions, patrons, brokers and promoters peddle not only art but careers, loyalties and fortunes of artists also,” to borrow a sharp statement from Oguibe.
Perhaps I am gambling my own fortune by playing with loyalties here, but is it not a disingenuous “self-reflexive enquiry” if Bell-Roberts, and more importantly, their magazine – art | south africa – are merely a footnote, a caveat, a sidebar? “What about Suzette and Brendon Bell-Roberts?…. it was decided to exclude the duo.” Aside from that statement lacking any agency (“mistakes were made!”), I’m more interested in why publications, and their editors, were left off this list. art | south africa is the only regular, high quality, international print publication in the country.
How much power do writers, gallerists or artists have without being seen in the public eye? art | south africa left out that they ask for, and/or refuse, columns both by and about everyone on their own (and everyone else’s) list. The mag is the (most) public face of our contemporary art, and with that comes power and influence.
