Strauss & Co’s Johannesburg Auction Week – a three-day live virtual sale – will take place from 7–9 November, and feature contemporary South African art and photography.
Contemporary South African photography, strange enough, is better known abroad than locally.
The reason: to date, a number of major exhibitions of South African photography have been mounted in major museums overseas in recent times, only one of which travelled to South Africa: in 1998: Democracy’s Images: Photography and Visual Art after Apartheid, Bildmuseet, Umea, Sweden; in 2000: Porträt Afrika: Fotographische Positionen eines Jahrhunderts, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, also in 2000: Gavin Janjes: Rhizomes of memory: tre srafrikanske fotografer: Oslo, Norway; in 2011: Figures and Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography, Victoria & Albert Museum, London; and in 2013: Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life, International Center of Photography, New York, an exhibition that was also mounted at MuseumAfrika, Johannesburg in 2015.
Strauss & Co aims to redress this situation by offering collectors of contemporary art exemplary photographic works by leading South African artists who use this as their main medium of expression. The 2018 report compiled by Mary Corrigall, Contemporary African Art Ecology, maintains that25% of Contemporary African artists use photography as their main means of creating art works.
The photographic lots on the Strauss & Co sale, the majority from the collection of a prominent art collector and dealer, include works by Jane Alexander, Nontsikelelo Veleko, Steven Cohen, Berni Searle, Mikhael Subotzky, and David Goldblatt. His iconic works on the auction, Semi-Final of the Miss Lovely Legs Competition (Lot 119) and Victoria Cobokana with her Children (lot 133) attest to the diverse, if not troubled history of our country.
All these lots reflect the different ways in which the photographic medium can be applied to phenomenal effect in art works, such as the giclee printing technique of the Zanele Muholi portrait MuMu XIX (lot 120), the Stephan Inggs’ silver gelatin emulsion printing technique used in his still-life (lot 128), and the Minette Vari’s Quake video installation (lot129).
The three-day live virtual sale from 7–9 November also features important paintings by JH Pierneef and Alexis Preller, exceptional works on paper by contemporary master William Kentridge, as well as five paintings by Vladimir Tretchikoff. Johannesburg Auction Week also includes an 18-lot mini-session exploring the persuasive influence of classical African Art and early European Modernism on post-war South African artists.
Strauss & Co will preview works in Johannesburg Auction Week at its dedicated exhibition space at 89 Central Street, Houghton, Johannesburg.
Visit straussart.co.za to view the art works on sale.
