SABRINA DEAN – The prestigious Absa L’Atelier Art Award has been scooped by a Bloemfontein based artist for the second year running.
Pauline Gutter took the overall award in the 28th L’Atelier competition with her piece entitled “Huweliksaansoek”. Last year the award went to Elrie Joubert, also based in Bloemfontein.
Gutter’s work features a video, old farm telephone, engraved plaque and wood. According to a statement, a 1.8m high association-rich obelisk confronts the observer with the intimate action of a stud-bull’s seminal discharge. The observer is encouraged to ‘listen in’ voyeuristically to the ‘agri-porno’ on the screen. The listening-in apparatus is a farm-line handset; the soundtrack is the voice of Gerben Kamper, recognisable as that of the heroic musketeer, Brakkenjan.
Even though it’s now obsolete, the handset symbolises the first phase of the search for women, which is ‘listened to’ by the entire community. The text is a collage of dialogue from the kykNet reality show ‘Boer Soek ‘n Vrou’, in which the female role is that of a homemaker and progeny-provider.
Productivity and sustainability in agriculture are determined by the interaction between cattle-breeding, land ownership and the guarantee of descendants. The three elements are brought into context in a humoristic but also anthropological-museum-like manner. With social and gender implications, the piece raises the question, ‘Does a farmer search for a wife in the way he would search for stud animals and breed them?’
Gutter wins a cash prize of R125-thousand, as well as return flights and a six month residency at the Cité International des Arts in Paris, France. Johannesburg artist Mongezi Ncaphayi took the Gerard Sekoto Award for the most promising artist with an annual income of less than R60-thousand with his work “Migrant Workers’ Hostels”.
Merit awards went to Jaco van Schalkwyk from Johannesburg for his mixed media installation “Beloofde Land?/Promised Land?” and Port Elizabeth based artist Kathleen Sawyer for her work “Somata”.
According to Absa, the competition, presented in partnership with the SA National Association for the Visual Arts (SANAVA), is rated as the longest-running and most influential art contest on the continent. “It pays homage to both established and emerging young local artists and their compelling artistic vision,” the statement said.
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