May 19, 2004
By Philippa Garson
JOHANNESBURG'S cultural arc, which spans Constitution Hill to Newtown, is to be enriched by an R8-million public-art project that will create a visual trail to link many of the artistic riches along the way.
The initiative, the largest public-art project of the City's regeneration scheme, will result in a "visually coherent footprint through public art and signage" and create a trail - like Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumb path, albeit a more permanent one - from Constitution Hill to the Civic Centre, through Braamfontein to Wits University's East Campus and the Wits Theatre, across the Nelson Mandela Bridge and into Newtown, ending at the Bus Factory.
The project, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2005, brings together the Johannesburg Development Agency, Wits University's School of Arts and Trinity Session.
Of the R10-million made available for the public-art project, R2,1-million has been allocated to Constitution Hill. The rest will fund installations, sculptures, mosaic inlays and other features along the arc, and will enrich its public spaces.
Trinity Session - which runs The Premises, the Johannesburg Civic Theatre's new contemporary gallery - has the massive challenge of conceptualising and implementing the project. The group will also mentor masters students from the Wits School of Arts - teaching them theory and assigning them practical tasks.
Trinity Session comprises three highly creative young artists who bring a lot more besides to the company: Kathryn Smith is a critic, Stephen Hobbs an urbanism junkie and Marcus Neustetter an Internet whiz.
Their pooled experience in art, urban design, urban regeneration and community-oriented visual-arts projects is extensive. It's no surprise that the group, which formed in 2001, is in hot demand: it has just won contracts to advise Woolworths, Spier Wine Estates and IBM on their new public-art initiatives.
Hobbs, energetic but stressed, waxes lyrical about Trinity Session's track record and the challenges ahead. A priority is to employ lots of people - fast.
All three graduated from Wits in the mid-to-late 1990s. "We're part of a new generation of South African optimists," says Hobbs.
That Trinity Session is an all-white troika may raise some eyebrows.
Although the trio seem more free of the guilt-ridden, colour-obsessed "struggle baggage" their slightly older contemporaries carry, they are sensitive to the need to be more representative of South African society. Although Trinity Session works with many black artists, "we don't have enough black people or women on our team and we're addressing this," says Hobbs.
Collaboration with architects, urban designers, other artists and affected communities on the Faraday Project Precinct has given the team a keen sense of the challenges of a project of this scale.
The group had been based in Greenside. But, says Hobbs: "We knew that the inner city would take off and we thought, 'let's be where the action is'. We didn't want to be in a neighbourhood with too many restaurants," he laughs. "We were starting to get fat."
Hobbs, who was for more than six years the curator of the Market Theatre's now-defunct art gallery, is relieved to see the tide turning in the city's investment in arts and culture. He has seen too many contemporary art galleries - including that of the Market Theatre - close for lack of money and interest.
Hobbs has spent lots of time "looking at alternative methods of collective practice to deal with the increasing demise of non-profit art spaces". So an initiative such as the cultural-arc project is manna from heaven.
As Jeremy Wafer of the Wits School of Arts puts it: "It's a major project and one of the few opportunities to get public art into the city. It will give a sense of ownership and pride to the people who both work and live in the area. It will give to the public a sense that art is very much integrated into the community space.
"For example, if you live and work near a beautiful sculpture you will develop a different sense of what that place means to you."
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