19 June 2008
THE City has committed itself to spending one percent of all major building projects over R10-million on public art, and it’s getting down to this arty business with gusto.
“The percentage is calculated on the total construction or renovation costs of public buildings and facilities, including design fees and landscaping,” according to its public art policy document.
To this end a Public Art Fund has been set up. And the person overseeing all this beautification is Kirsten Harrison, the executive manager of planning and strategy at the Johannesburg Development Agency.
Right now she is up to her elbows in planning art in the five public parks in Hillbrow and Berea. The public artworks destined for these two suburbs have been planned in consultation with the people most likely to encounter and enjoy them – the children who use the parks.
“These are residential neighbourhoods and we want people to engage in the environment,” says Harrison. “As there are a lot of children in the parks, we want the artworks to delight [them].”
The five parks are Pieter Roos, Donald MacKay, Le Roith, JL de Villiers and Alec Gorshel parks. Harrison reckons that there will be more public art in the inner city than anywhere else in Joburg. And she hopes the initiative will be picked up by other city dwellers or corporates, who will be encouraged to emulate the example.
All the parks will get rubber master fibre play areas, designed in consultation with children, who played shadow games, cutting out cardboard shapes and having fun while giving the artists ideas on what appealed to them. These shapes will be imprinted on the master fibre playground floors. Master fibre is a durable matting material made from recycled car tyres.
Pieter Roos Park
The biggest park, Pieter Roos, with the Braamfontein Spruit trickling through it, has several artists applying their minds to imaginative areas. There is to be a performance platform, cut out of steel sheeting, with shading and seating made from steel cut-out shapes that will create interesting light and shade effects on the platform
Odd tree stumps have been carved and have taken on new lives as a rabbit, a running shoe, a protea, a horse and a chaise longue. The Joburg skyline will be painted on the wall of the electrical sub-station by graffiti artist Rasty.
In the middle of the park is a newly created stone step walkway. A circular information board will be placed at the beginning of the walkway, and each stepping stone will contain sandblasted text, explaining the journey of the water of the spruit through the park.
At JC de Villiers Park, half-moon walls along pathways will contain horizontal painted soccer figures with balls, and in Donald MacKay Park decorative figures placed on the tops of poles are already in position.
Linking all the parks will be 100 wayfinders in the form of concrete pavement bricks with shapes embossed on them, developing from footprints into insects like spiders and bees. Large concrete bricks with two holes with them will be placed along pavements to form benches, which will have games and discussion points engraved on them.
In Donald MacKay Park, life-size steel soccer and basketball players will be bolted into the ground.
Trinity Session
Co-ordinating and sourcing the artists for this work is the Trinity Session. Marcus Neustetter, an artist and one of the partners in the company, says it plays an important role in the art market by supporting up-and-coming artists who are normally ignored by the formal art market.
In the process their work rises in value, by as much as 20 percent. Township artists and those working in the Artists’ Proof Studio in Newtown are a major source of the art used by Trinity Session.
It has been involved in sourcing art for sections of the Constitution Hill cultural arc, like the Juta Street trees and the huge eland at the start of Jan Smuts Avenue in Braamfontein.
“We have positioned ourselves as a city that needs its icons,” says Neustetter, but he stresses that those icons must connect with the community.
Placing art in high-density, high-traffic areas has its demands, he adds. Firstly, it’s vital to engage the public who are most exposed to the art, finding out what they want and need. Vandalism and security are issues that can’t be ignored – they dictate what material is used for the artwork, and how the artwork is secured into position.
The building or public area itself is also important – how the building functions and how the art will function in that space is a major consideration.
Neustetter indicates too that Trinity Session is helping to educate the artists about how to produce work that is likely to sell in the market at which they’re aiming.
Future plans for art in Hillbrow are to happen at Pullinger Kop in Nugget Street. The waterfall, tumbling down the rock face below high-rise residential blocks, has been switched off. Plans in the pipeline include blue mosaic tiling down the waterfall. Once this has been completed, the waterfall will be switched on again.
The mosaic theme will continue with five figures created in the rocky wall up the steep Nugget Street hill. A stairway up the hill will also contain mosaic text.
Improved sports facilities
At the same time, most of the parks are to get improved sports facilities. Pieter Roos Park is being churned up by bulldozers as workers prepare to create a one-kilometre jogging track and two beach soccer fields – a five-a-side and a seven-a-side, lined with plastic Astroturf.
Donald MacKay Park is to get a five-a-side soccer field too, and the basketball and netball courts are to be renovated. The larger Alec Gorshel Park will also get a five-a-side Astroturf soccer field.
Public art has also recently been placed in the Ellis Park precinct. There are four life-size wooden angels on pedestals outside the Alhambra Theatre in Beit Street, Doornfontein. Around the corner in Sivewright Street are two soccer players, one stretching up high for the ball, the other doing a handstand, with his legs in the air.
“An angel has an image as something that gives protection,” says Andrew Lindsay, an artist and the owner of the Spaza Gallery, and the person who is co-ordinating the placement of the artworks in the Ellis Park precinct.
A CD made available to prospective investors and city aficionados locally and internationally, would be a great marketing tool for the inner city.
And to "une terrible gaffe". Have you ever had a word in your mind that is very close to another word that means something terribly different from what you intended and, so intent are you on using the right one, that the wrong one comes out? Well, in my acceptance speech I wanted to thank "the three women in my life", two for their support and encouragement - my wonderful wife, Hazel, and my business partner, Katherine Cox. The third was the inner city itself, which my wife calls my "mistress").
Besides the children enjoying the new-look, fun parks, flat dwellers will overlook the interesting shapes in the playgrounds, or the carved tree stumps, or the mosaic patterns, and be able to enjoy them from their windows and balconies.
