Book Launch: Resident Alien by Rian Malan

We went to Rian Malan's book launch at The Radium Beerhall last night. Resident Alien is a collection of his magazine articles from the past 20 years.

I loved the speeches -- by Rian himself, by his friend Steven "Boytjie" Sidley who harbored Rian when he fled to Los Angeles, and by the publisher.

Each illuminated what an outcast Rian has made himself by espousing difficult beliefs -- for example, that AIDS is an exaggerated crisis, with numbers inflated in order to garner more international funding. I can't wait to read the book.

The Radium is one of my favorite places in Joburg. The oldest pub still open in the city, it's cozy and real, with wood-clad walls and Guinness on tap.

For more on the launch and a book summary:
http://jonathanball.book.co.za/blog/2009/11/12/rian-malans-resident-alien-launched-at-the-radium-beer-hall/

Invitation to "mine" exhibition

In his new series of oil paintings, "mine", Niebuhr documents Joburg's mine dumps and finds three major themes:  a landscape that refuses to remember itself; a city built on fate and the forces of a gold rush; and the paradox of poisonous beauty -- the mine dumps may look like mountains of gold dust but their bleached appearance is actually the result of the toxic process of gold extraction.

The mine dumps are disappearing, cleared to recycle their minerals and to open new spaces for development.  Landmarks that people have known for years will be gone --but since mine dumps have no names, they will not be commemorated. 

Niebuhr finds a certain pathos in their disappearance.

Johannesburg would not exist but for the gold mines, and the dumps are their remnants.  Niebuhr says, "That's why the mine dumps are so specifically Joburg:  they are man-made, iconic, and represent the reasons we are here." 

Last, Niebuhr says he has been drawn to the mine dumps despite their toxicity.  "I've climbed them at dawn and at sunset," and he keeps coming back for more.  Using the Top Star drive-in cinema as a central point, he has been documenting the mine dumps from Randfontein on the West Rand to Boksburg on the East.

Born here, Niebuhr has been painting Johannesburg for nearly a decade.  Working from his studio in Fordsburg, he makes cityscapes and urban portraits to capture the flux of decay and growth which so characterise Joburg, and "mine" is his latest statement on a city he considers truly his.

Book Launch: The Last Resort by Douglas Rogers, US version

In a luxurious apartment in SoHo filled with art, we attended the US launch of Douglas Rogers' book "The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe."

Douglas went to university with me, and we have kept in touch since then, traveling through post-Katrina Louisiana on a photo-journalistic mission and getting up to other mischief. This time we had a terrific visit with Douglas and his wife Gracie at their home in Brooklyn.

Douglas will be coming to South Africa to promote his book in about two months. For more information on The Last Resort, which is getting great reviews, see www.douglasrogers.org

"Portrait with Keys" released in the U.S.

The excellent book "Portrait with Keys" has just been published in the United States by Norton. The author, Ivan Vladislavic, asked me to contribute a painting for the cover. I'm very pleased by the way it turned out.

Wedding Day video slideshow

Here's the slideshow Dutchy made of our wedding day.

Rooftop of the Troyeville Hotel, Johannesburg. 25 April 2009.

Two Glass Block Nudes

Just completed these paintings. They're about 3 metres high. The distortion comes from looking at the subjects through glass blocks.

Bram Fischer Public Art Commission

"If in my fight I can encourage even some people to understand and to abandon policies they now so blindly follow, I shall not regret any punishment I may incur." - Bram Fischer, 1965

The Johannesburg Development Agency asked me to make work for a community hall in Bram Fischerville, a neighborhood in Soweto named after human rights activist Bram Fischer.  He was the defense attorney for Nelson Mandela and saved Mandela from the death penalty.  Later, Fischer himself was sentenced to a long imprisonment and died because of poor medical treatment he received in jail.

I designed a five-circle mural series and a large tondo (round painting) because the windows in the hall are circular.  Each circle represents one aspect of his personality, and I chose five and the bright red background to echo the 5-pointed star of the Communist Party, of which he was a founding and prominent member, back when it was a powerful force in anti-apartheid activism.

Then, on the display wall at ground level, I wrote a bio of Bram Fischer and had it letter-stencilled onto a big sheet of Plexiglass, and hung that on the wall.  Next to it, I cut out a thick piece of chipboard Supawood and painted a head and shoulders portrait of Fischer there.