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22nd
January 1998
Sue Williamson
greeted the both of us from her third floor studio located about ten
blocks from the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town. It's Roughly 2000
square feet in size , it was filled with many pieces of her work , a
couple new pieces already in progress lay on the floor. She offered
us some samosas as we sat down and acclimated ourselves. Two days prior
to this interview we were invited to her birthday dinner party. It was
there that I shared in her food and friends company. We finally got
home at two in the morning. I have a huge amount of respect for her
and felt privileged to be given the opportunity to engage in some enlightening
conversation .
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Sue
talked about her publication, "ART
IN SOUTH AFRICA, the Future Present." |
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We
did put out a letter , inviting everybody to submit slides and
material. You interview somebody and then ask them which other
artists work they like, what else have you seen that's interesting,
but you know it's a very small country. I was accused of marginalizing
Durban, not giving it enough attention,.. but it's true, we didn't
go up to Durban, the funding was tight. We were paying for our
own travel expenses and we didn't include many Durban artists,
but otherwise we pretty well covered the waterfront as far as
Cape Town and Johannesburg goes. It's not to say that there aren't
any very good artists who aren't in the book. You pick people
not only because you like there particular work, perhaps it just
fits with that particular book, and another thing is, I think
there is a different thing to actually seeing work and seeing
photographs of work, because the photographs sometimes work better,
it's like models, if you photograph models, some women who aren't
that attractive photograph beautifully, and other beautiful women
don't photograph well, and in a sense it's almost like that with
artwork, some photographs extremely dramatically and others you
just can't really get it in a shot.
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CE:
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Exactly
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SW:
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| So
you have to say well ,... that for these purposes of this book |
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CE:
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It seems
to me that a lot of the artwork that we've seen, especially at the Johannesburg
Biennale seem to be more installation oriented , rather than what
we've heard about in the 95 Biennale, which was a lot of painting and
two-dimensional work.
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SW:
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CE:
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Is that
more of a trend in South Africa now?
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SW:
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| It
certainly is more of a trend, but I think it's an international
trend, and South Africa's just running along, keep up with that. |
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CE:
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How long
have you been in South Africa now?
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SW:
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| Well
since I was seven, I went to New York when I was in my twenties.
I first started going to art classes at the Students classes for
Art, which is a place where any one can go, you don't need qualifications,
you can just sign up for classes , and I really enjoyed doing that.
I did live drawing , painting and etching, and started out as a
printmaker. I loved the process of etching very much, and when I
came back to this country, it was like I write for a living, or
write to keep some bills paid and to make art as an artist. But
there came a point when I decided that I was an artist and not a
writer. I stopped writing writer in my passport and changed it to
artist, none-the- less I think my work tends to have some kind of....I
think the journalism and some kind of advertising comes through
a lot, there's always a sense of a narrative and interest in surrounding
events. |
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CE:
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Do you
have specific themes you tend to work with, or is it specific media's
or techniques you use?
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SW:
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| I
think there are some broad themes that I work with. In the broadest
terms I would say my theme is the contemporary history of this country,
and I 'm generally dealing with something that's happening at the
time. At the moment, work that I'm doing now is looking at the Truth and Reconciliation commission,
and so that while to overseas people it might seem old stuff, it's
not really old stuff here, because we're going through the process
of trying to come to terms with the past. I think we have to reach
that point where we come to some kind of resolution and say OK,
well we've dealt with this as much of it as we can deal with, before
we move on, so what I'll be doing after this, I don't know. |
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CE:
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You've
put out two books on South African Artists now. Has that helped your
own work, and would you talk about the changes you've seen between the
publication of the two books and what the general purpose, or need for
it was?
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SW:
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| In
1986 I was invited to come to New York by the Women's
Caucus for Art, which is a National women's art organization
to give a lecture. So I came to New York and the subject of my talk
was the role of art in Apartheid in South Africa, and I was looking
at whether it could make changes or not, and then somebody there
said look , you've got great slides here why don't you writer a
book about it and it had never occurred to me until that moment,
but I thought well oh yes I've already done half the work , under
the slides just write a few captions and tie it together, and in
fact it took two and a half years, and it was far more work than
I had anticipated but it was very nice because I enjoyed it as a
process, because it gave me a chance to go around and talk to artists.
Artists know other artists and so on, but then you go and actually
sit with somebody in there studio and start to delve a bit as to
why they've done it and what the techniques are and so on. Then
it becomes a very interesting process. I mean that part was the
best part for me, and also I do kind of respond to images a lot,
I like working with images of work. I think I made this point earlier,
art has a couple of lives. It has one life when you're actually
making it, that process is an important part for the artist, then
when that's finished it begins it's second phase of it's life where
people come and look at it, and react to it in a particular space,
in a Gallery. It's third life is when it appears in catalogues and
books, and so that it's being judged as a photographed image, and
all of those different things, it's quiet interesting to me that
it should be like that . So I did the first book, and what happened
was it was published at the end of 1989, November, and at the time
that I wrote it we did not know when Apartheid would end. I mean
we knew it would end, but when. Is it a ten year program or a twenty
year program, we really had no idea because the state had such tight
control although there were all kinds of pressures and things, I
just couldn't see how it was going to actually happen. And then
three months after the book came out Mandela was released and suddenly
everything began to change, the whole log jam had just been smashed
in one go. So it was very interesting that the book actually finished
off right at that point, literally three months, and then the next
one. I wasn't really planning to write a second one but it just
happened, after a while, people would ask me, when are you going
to do the next one, and I said no, I'm not going to. I really want
to do my own work in the studio, and then I went to an exhibition
called "Scurvy", which was Lisa Bryce and Kevin Brand
and some other young artists here in Cape Town. I looked at the
work and I thought well, things are really happening here, there's
enough here that we should look at now, because this is also an
important period. This is the period of change, transition. If we
don't document this now, in another five years we would have forgotten
how we felt about this. If you don't write it down and look at it,
you do forget Even now, when I look at the first book, the language
that I used seems to be rather overblown and rhetorical and I wouldn't
use that language today. One just changes, and so now people just
say, are you going to do another book? And I say, well no ,not now.
I don't know, never say never. Also if other people were writing
books I wouldn't feel like I had to do it, but it's partially because
nobody else is doing it. That's the annoying part, the whole thing
is under documented. |
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CE:
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Speaking
a little about the Truth and Reconciliation committee and how your work
deals with the Contemporary history of the country, what do you feel
is the responsibility or role of the artist in society is right now?
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SW:
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I think the responsibility of every artist is to do exactly what
it is they think they should be doing. I don't think there's a thing
which says you have to do something which is better for society
at large . I think if you want to concentrate on your own identity,
gender, the colour blue as against another colour , that's exactly
what you have to do , you have to listen to your self, to tell you
what you're going to do as an artist, so,.. no, I don't think that
artists have a responsibility to society in that way. I mean, if
you do feel that you do want to do something, which I do, then that's
OK, but I would not prescribe to other people what they should be
doing. I might not like what they're doing but that's there prerogative
to do it. |
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CE:
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Your exhibition
at
Robben Island. What was the importance of exhibiting on Robben Island?
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SW:
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importance of exhibiting on the Island was that it was for us, for
so long a symbol, well it was the place where the people we considered
to be our leaders were incarcerated , and as you drive around Cape
Town you drive around De Vaal Drive coming through town, going out
to the suburbs you were always aware of that Island, and it was
so close you could see it, and you could even get in a boat and
you would be able to go there. Occasionally people did go there
on bird tours and something, and skirted past the prison. My mother
went . There it was, the prison. It was an honor to be to exhibit
out there.invited to do something in the visitors block, which is
where the prisoners would walk down from the jail. The visitors
block is right near the harbor, and the visitors would come in the
ferry, visitors would come in the back and the prisoners would come
in the front, and they'd meet, or they wouldn't meet because there
was a wall between them with a tiny frame of glass, but they would
at least be able to see each other through that .So to do something
in that very loaded space which was of such historical importance,
that had seen so many leaders of this country go through, I mean
that was an honor to be invited to do that. |
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PJ:
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Maybe
you'd like to touch on the funding in this country prior to the demise
of of Apartheid here, what the works were, and the support they had
from the community, the private sector. Maybe a little insight into
then versus now?
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SW:
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Well
funding was always difficult, there was a conference in 1978 called
State of Art in South Africa which is '78 , two years after the
Soweto Riots. I think it was '78 , may have been '79, well in
any case, at that conference many of the artists signed a statement
saying they would not take part in anything that was by Government
funding, so if it was an overseas exhibition and the invitation
came by the State. We didn't participate. So Government funding
was completely out, and the reason being we now didn't want to
give the Government legitimacy by showing as part of something
which was sponsored by them, so otherwise funding was always extremely
difficult. I know that some companies like The Standard Bank funded
the Grahamstown Arts Festival, well for individual funding it
was almost impossible. I was invited to go to Sydney in '93, the
Sydney
Biennale. I started writing to Companies who would put up
the airfare. I wasn't even asking for a sponsorship. I said I'll
make something for you, you can commission me to do something
for your company and I'll make it. Finally South African Breweries
gave me the money for the airfare in exchange for me doing some
work around their company history. But it was very difficult for
funding. If you're at a University or an Institution you might
be able to get something, some people like the Goodman
Gallery, Linda Givon, she's always been extremely generous
in support of her artists and funding their projects and helping
with plane tickets to get to exhibitions that they've been invited
to.
But
she is one of a very few. It's not like get out a list of grants
and see where you can find your money. It's not like that. There
is now an organization called BASA that is Business Arts South
Africa, that is an attempt,.. it has been launched quiet recently
in the last few months.. to link business and artists. BASA will
help artists to try and find suitable partners in the business
world for particular projects on the basis that good art is also
good business. The idea is that you get private funding and BASA
will match it for you, but the problem is when I went to BASA
for funding for the Robben Island catalog for instance, I was
told that they don't want to do anything political. So... They
did actually give me funding for my Johannesburg piece , the "Messages
in the Moat", but it's not easy to get funding.
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PJ:
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How
do we bridge this big gap in education , more specifically art education
here now that the doors have swung open widely?
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SW:
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that gap, the gap that black arts face in art training and getting
their work out exists simply because art was just never a part of
the education syllabus at black schools. The only art experience
the kids would have was if they were asked to trace a map for geography,
or a side story, something like that. That was their use of pencil.
It just never was an option, to become an artist,.. really. I believe
is now being put on the curriculum but at the same time education
is in such a mess that don't suppose things will improve. The number
of black artists is extremely limited. Even now David
Koloane who is simply one of the most senior artists in this
country, people will say to him, well, when are you going to get
a proper job. You know it's not seen as a job really, it seems like
a kind of a hobby. Something that is still said to we is how lucky
I am to have such a good hobby. Art is not seen as an appropriate
job in the black community , they have that to face as well, it's
not really a habit in the black communities, going to Galleries
and so on, art, of course has always been a part of life so that
art which is part of the community, walls that are painted to beautify
the community, houses that are painted, furniture that is functional
but also beautiful, vessels, drinking vessels, all that sort of
thing. That form of art has always been a part of African culture.
The idea of making objects that are put on a wall is still quiet
an alien concept. If you went into houses in Soweto you'd probably
find more posters of Michael Jackson or whatever, than art pieces
by local artists. |
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CE:
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Do you
think that will change in the next couple of generations with the integration
of education?
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SW:
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I do, with people moving up the economical scale , I certainly think
that by the time that people become more middle class, get better
jobs, more money to spend. With that becomes the desire to begin
to collect beautiful art pieces, and have some things that interest
you up in your home, that kind of thing. But there's a big gap. |
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CE:
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Is
there any kind of general new art movement here?
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SW:
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don't know that one can say if there's any one movement here, I
think everyone's experiencing the euphoria and also the problems
of the new dispensation and everything's been shaken up and everyone's
trying to find their place, to use the new freedoms but also deal
with the problems and it's weight. I think that there's an enthusiasm
and energy here that I don't find overseas , there's a feeling that
it is a historical moment to be here. |
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CE:
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What
are some of your hopes and plans for the future with art and working
here in South Africa?
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SW:
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can't imagine being based anywhere else in the world. |
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PJ:
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I'd
like to touch on your installation at the Biennale in Johannesburg and
if you could please touch on the message?
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SW:
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The
piece that I did for the Biennale was called " Messages
from the Moat". It was actually started when
I was invited by a town in Holland called Hoorn to do a piece
about their town which the Dutch colonists first sailed forth
to come here to South Africa. When I visited the town and went
to the museum it just was like a carbon copy of the castle here,
the kind of collection that they had. The old Dutch glass, the
blue and white V.O.C. , the china, the old Dutch paintings. It
was interesting to look at that link, and I thought that after
all. if you look at how those collections were built up, they're
still being presented as desirable collections that people should
go and visit, but they were actually built up on the backs of
the slaves, the slaves were what gave those Dutch colonists their
wealth. So I thought it would be nice to make a piece which was
linked to those two collections ,so the title "Messages
from the moat" , is the moat around the Cape Town
castle where one of those collections is, and it's the story of
the messages in the bottle and what I found was that we have incredible
archives in this country, we had lists of all the slaves who'd
been bought and sold during those times. Where they came from,
how old they were, what sex they were, it was all written down
, so and so, sold by so and so, on this and this date, and he
came from Madagascar, children, adults, women, the lot. And so
I counted up those names and there was more than 150. I got a
wine bottle for every single slave that was bought or sold during
that period, and each bottle represents a deed of sale, it's got
stenciled on it, actually I can show you, (Sue gets up and moves
to the back wall and picks up a bottle and turns to me and shows
me the bottle) it's got the name of the slave, the birthplace,
the seller, the buyer, the date, the price they were sold for,
how many rates, dollars, and the place, well they were sold in
Cape Town. So the bottle was like this. I stenciled these and
then I engraved, this one hasn't been engraved yet. I engraved
each one of those with the names so it was like the recovery of
the history of the slaves. Then inside the bottles are copy of
old Dutch painting that have been cut up, it's like the revenge
of the slaves in a sense, well we'll cut up your paintings, send
them back. The piece is supposed to be going to Holland .
(Sue
walks back and picks up a piece of painted material and turns
to me)
I
made these copies of theses old pieces we all know so very well
from that period on canvas and I just cut them up and put them
in the bottles, and so in the Biennale , that strip of water is
supposed to represent a section of moat and it's as if they are
so many, this net has just pulled up all of them, it's still dripping
through . It fit in very well with the theme of the Biennale 'Trade
Routes and Geography' , well that's the meaning of trade routes
and geography in South Africa. Those first slaves who were brought
here, who were traded like any commodity to do the basic work
of the colony.
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CE:
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What do
you think of the marriage of art and technology in the future?
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The
future of technology is a very exciting medium, I don't know if
medium is really the right term because there are so many branches
to it. To me it's just like expanding the options that are open
to artists. It can never take over, it's just one channel, you
still got to have the conceptual strength. It still has got to
have structure. You just have to look at computer art to see how
much of it is just second grade collage stuff that is easy to
put together because you can put it together on the computer,
change the colours, and it doesn't actually mean anything. It
still needs that artists eye, so, you've still got to have that.
When you've got that, technologies just another aspect. Painting,
you'll always have, there'll always be forms of sculpture that,
it won't take over it's just another part that can be chosen.
It's just expanded the options. At the moment video is very popular,
and installations are not quiet as popular as they were a couple
of years ago. Everything is valid, it really just really depends
on what the individual artists do and what their techniques are.
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