Cape Town People Stories and Places at the Cape Gallery, is a group show that focuses on what makes this city special. This is an extensive exhibition with a variety of artwork in many different media.
From the first, Cape Town was centred round a port, a garden, and a fort. Strand Street, Whale Street, Buitengracht and Buitenkant Streets defined the limits of the old City. Today a few of the gracious buildings of yesteryear afford space for artists to practise and galleries to thrive. At street level, below the towering office blocks are the numerous bars, cafés, shops selling vibrant Tsetswe prints, curio shops and the hairdressing salons of the inner city.
A glimmer of past exploits, endeavours and conquests still lingers on in the old Cape Town Central business District: commemorative statues of past potentates, war memorials and murals, passive reminders of a rich and diverse cultural history of the city.
Initiated by Jan van Riebeek in 1652, the Company Gardens once supplied the ships rounding the Cape with fresh produce. A pear tree planted by van Riebeek still persists. Contained within the Company Gardens today are Government House, the Houses of Parliament, St Georges Cathedral the South African National Gallery, Natural History Museum, and the South African Library. The Alexander Podlashuc painting above is of the Rose Garden in the Company Gardens where a beautiful hybrid rose ‘Peace’ was planted commemorating the fallen at the end of WWII.’
Settled against the backdrop of Signal Hill, Lions Head, Table Mountain, and Devils Peak Capetonians live on an elevation that offers magnificent views of the city. Successive extensions to the foreshore and the exciting Waterfront development built around a working harbour offer additional opportunities of leisure shopping and entertainment.
Approaching the cape, the early seafarers sighting Table Mountain from afar saw Cape Town as a promise of respite and safety, a noteworthy subject to paint. The British Admiralty commissioned William Hodges, R A (1744 -1797) to paint Cape Town from the bay to commemorate Captain Cooks visit. Table Mountain, Devils Peak and Lion’s head loom preternaturally large in Hodges painting which is now hanging in the William Fehr collection in the Castle (See Iziko Museum Route in the Arts + Crafts Map). Artists today still see this condensed view of Devils Peak, Table Mountain, and Lions Head as the iconic view of Cape Town and frequently represent it.
One of the unique features of Cape Town is the Malay Quarter which was built for the most part between 1795 and 1820 on the slopes of Signal Hill. Joy Collier, artist, historian, and author of ‘Portrait of Cape Town ‘(pub. 1961 by Longman) elaborates:
“Brought to the Cape from the East Indies, the Malays proved skilled artisans. They became the carpenters, builders, tailors, shoemakers, and coopers of the Cape. After 1830 they drifted into the tiny, flat roofed houses of the smaller bourgeoisie, whose scroll work, fanlights, panelled doors, and small paned windows they had probably helped to build. Today the streets are cobbled and sloping, lined with old houses and unexpected mosques and minarets.”
The artist and political cartoonist Tony Grogan add a further reminisce:
“I do have fond memories of my early days in Cape Town where we arrived in 1974 from the Eastern Cape to take up the position of editorial cartoonist of the Cape Times. I remember the editor, Tony Heard advising me on my appointment not to get desk-bound, but to wander around Cape Town and get the feeling, the buzz, of the city. This led to my wandering around Bokaap (the Malay Quarter), in those days a much more degraded and derelict area than it is today, with chickens and goats in the streets and many of the houses falling into ruin. In many ways it offered more inspiration for drawing than it does in its renovated condition today.
Tony Grogan
The poet Adam Small tells us District Six was more than just a place at a time, it was a community with soul. He notes that ‘the area was declared white in the year of our Lord 1966 and shortly afterwards the bulldozers and other demolition machines were executing their terrible mission, and the seventies became the bitter years of our resentment’.
Tony Grogan laments the forced removals:
“District 6 was in its death throes and the bulldozers (Maria’s Steyn the then Minister of Community Development insisted the government would never have been so heartless as to use bulldozers, as the press reported. They were in fact front-end loaders!) were moving in to demolish the last houses. The residents who were still there walked around in in a dazed state of shock. If anything symbolised the callousness of apartheid it was this wanton distraction of an established community, all in the name of a crazed policy of social engineering. The drawings I made at the time I thought formed an archival record and several were included in one of my books published by Don Nelson, Under the title, ‘Vanishing Cape Town’, and as a background to many of the cartoons I did at the time.’
Now a vacant plot District Six lives on in the hearts and minds of the people, historic records, the words of the poets and the visual arts. Kenny Baker, Derek Drake, Gregoire Boonzaier, Tony Grogan, Sandra McGregor, Q Pienaar, Charles Powel Jones, Attie Visser.
Take time to look and ponder. Share your recollections with us on Facebook, we would love to hear from you.
WHAT: Cape Town People Stories and Places
WHERE: The Cape Gallery, 60 Church Street, Cape Town 8001
WHEN: Opening First Thursday, October 6 | On show until Wednesday, 30 November | Gallery Hours: Mon to Fri: 09h30 to 16h00, Sat: 10h00 to 14h00
INFO: T +27 21 4235309 | E web@capegallery.co.za | Visit
LEAD PHOTO: Rose Garden with Archives by Alexander Podlashuc
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