It’s time for the 2009 Joburg Art Fair — it started today at 10am — and this means, among other things, that I have to resurrect this blog from its long hibernation. For daily coverage of the fair from the Mail & Guardian watch this site.

Last night’s launch was peopled by pretty young things in black dresses and red lipstick, a stock cast who for years, it seems, have been stepping out of their coffins after dark to put in an appearance at the world’s big art events. They were everywhere at the last Frieze Fair in London, which alarmed me for two reasons: first, red lipstick can’t possibly be so enduringly fashionable and second, I had clean forgotten my little black dress (not to mention my wooden stake). Same problem this year. I turned up at the launch of the Joburg Art Fair in pink and looking somewhat bedraggled and I discerned that I fielded significantly less air-kisses than I have before at similar events where I’ve donned the LBD and played the vamp. This act is precisely what big commercial art events are all about. The game of cool, the selective shmooze, the money, the performance of a sublime boredom with all things common — and, most of all, placing your red dot with taste.

The red dot, the little scarlet sticker placed next to a work to indicate that it has been sold, is as ubiquitous at art fair launches as the red pout. In past international art fairs it was not unheard of for gallery booths to sell out (in the literal sense) completely at the launch event, leaving nothing but a triumphant “Sold Out” sign hanging in the cubicle for the bottom feeders who make it to the fair on days two and three. No one cleared their walls last night, but I was fairly impressed by the number of red dots I came across at each gallery stall. I didn’t count them. I’m saving that treat for this morning. But at each of the local gallery stalls I noticed at least three or four red dots on the wall before 8pm. These numbers are not going to keep the whole industry afloat, but they are certainly promising in a time of great frugality.

What are people buying? Pictures, mostly multiples like photographs and editioned prints, Nandipha Mntambo, William Kentridge
(see his new Nose etchings at David Krut’s stall), the Essop brothers, Zander Blom. The word on the street is that local buyers are going to keep on buying these kinds of pictures because they are relatively affordable and look nice in the lounge.

For an antidote to this imagophilia visit the Urban Scenographies booth where at 12pm today Joan Do will auction a sublime view of the inner city (not a picture of a view of the inner city, the actual view) and an ephemeral text performance by Maja Marx.

Tickets to the Joburg Art Fair cost R100 for a single day pass or R200 for a three-day pass and can be bought at the Sandton Convention Centre, at the entrance to the fair. The three-day pass gives you access to the Absolut Art Party, which takes place tonight at the Sandton Convention Centre from 6pm.

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 8:50 am and is filed under Lifestyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.