Five years ago South Africa's public art sector was in such infancy we kept having to get other jobs. Now she's a bouncing baby. Bouncy like a volcanic, fragile, somewhat precarious and miraculous balloon.

current funders & projects

Cratefan Elliot in Cape Town was conceived and designed by artist Porky Hefer and produced by us with a brilliant team of scaffolders, led by a hero by the name of Elliot. Sponsored by Coca Cola for the Soccer World Cup in 2010, he was meant to be decommissioned in December 2010 but was so beloved he is staying where he is until the end of 2012. A giant pop-art man, fabricated with 36tonnes of steel scaffolding as an armature, wrapped in mesh and clad in about 4000 red crates, he looks like a lego feast on the skyline. You can read more about him and Cratefan Oupa (a similar Joburg installation that was also beloved but lost his site by clicking on the EXPERIENCE menu.

Shoe Shop, Joburg  Funded by the Goethe Institute with which we are now intensely busy as producers of the project's public art manifestations. For this we have been responsible for design, print and installation of posters and signs. There are fantastic exhibitions now up at the base of the Hillbrow Tower in Goldreich Street, in Jeppe Taxi Rank, in Yeoville's Raleigh Street (on the old train), at the top of Op de Bergen Street in Troyeville, at 78 Fox Street (this work is just fantastic) and in Parktown North at the Bus Stop opposite where the Woolies is on 7th Avenue. You can read more about what's hapening right now on the BLOG section of the website. Right now (weekend of the 12th of May) we are about to re-install the exhibition by Jodi Bieber (was up in Hillbrow) at a new site in Noord Street - we hope - as long a as we get permissions. Watch the BLOG space.

Hush Hush is a spectacle international public art and photographic project that we have given this incorrect name to because we can't talk about it ... yet. It is in the nature of the biggest public art projects we do that they are confidential which is hilarious if you think about it. Just this quote from an unnamed source as a teaser: "Some photographers express themselves by photographing reality, others create it, while still others conceptualise it. These sections through visions of contemporary photography bring us closer to worlds which run counter to globalisation, explicit in their differences and their potential strangeness."

The Alex Arts Experience, Maboneng Festival: AAW! are working with a team of Alexandrians under the leadership of artist-producers Siphiwe Ngwenya and Tebogo Ramabulana , in arguably the most famous 'township' in Joburg, to strategically develop this extraordinary festival which has been hosted annually by an Alexandra community since 2002. Homeowners across a specific district in Alex that was historically known as Gomorrah (meaning it was pretty damn hectic to live there during apartheid), have been giving up their homes and yards, nooks and crannies to host the works of artists across all disciplines for a 3-day festival in which literally thousands of people participate. If you want to know how to turn shit into gold watch this space and be in Alex in September this year.

Joburg Art City 2012, 2014, 2016. Billed as the 'largest outdoor art exhibition in the world' Joburg Art City has a long history going back to 2002 and its 2010 Premiere, featuring the work of one Joburg-based contemporary artist, Mary Sibande, on 10 000 square metres of space normally reserved for advertising on our city skyline. The narrative through Mary's exhibition 'Long Live the Dead Queen' explored the nature of servitude and The project positions our city as leaders in contemporary public art, creating access to work normally exclusively shown in galleries and museums to hundreds and thousands of commuters and pedestrians, living and working in or visiting the city. You canr read more about the 2010 edition of Joburg Art City here by looking under the EXPERIENCE menu on this site, while we pursue the corridors of power for funding for the next three showings.

The Troyeville Bedtime Story never ends.This is our most-favoured own-sponsored project in the neighbourhood of AAW!s office and is the poster-child for the CEOs obsessive Neighbourhood Target Practice projects which are all about improving the atmosphere and reinventing the neglected public space in our environments, hearts and brains. In the context of contemporary art, the project is remarkable in that it is both permanent and ephemeral, produced by a professional arts team with the neighbourhood of the outer eastern edge of the inner city and you can become one of its leading characters by responding to it in any way you like. 2012 will see a Webcam and a blackboard on the site to reinforce its neighbourliness in its physical and online manifestations. Visit the CEOs blog on www.lesfolies.posterous.com and find the tag for the Troyeville Bedtime Story for ongoing Chapters and read about it under SPECIAL PROJECTS on the EXPERIENCE menu on the site.

ART. ACT. AAW!s CEO offers a series of sessions and workshops - and the time of your life - including talks and participatory experiences, ranging from a visual feast-session for everyone about Neighbourhood Target Practice, workshops resultingin 'instant public work' for artists across disciplines, and customised sessions for built environment professionals, urban designers/planners, property developers/owners - about dreams and placemaking, as well as the marketing and advertising sector with a special focus on imagination and identity. You can find out more about these here too by clicking on the SPEAKER menu.

 

HIGHLIGHTS PREVIOUS PROJECTS / CLIENTS

Sandton Central Arts Programme (5 years from 2005 - 2010)

Open Street Sessions - annual summer programme of live street performance featuring some of the world's leading performance artists, musicians, installation hybrid types, clowns, mimes and storytellers. Took place throughout the district, mostly at lunch and commuting times.

The BenchMark Commission - a series of benches and seats in the area, each imagined and conceived by a different artist. The whole idea was to make places to sit down in a district that notoriously narrowed its sidewalks.

The Annual Public Art Lighting Programme - The Why Men by Usha Seejarim.

Johanesburg Development Agency

Invented Mythologies by Anwar Doung Jahangeer - sculpture for the new Ellis Park Precinct. Partnership between JDA, City of Johannesburg and mma Architects

Jewel City public art - sculpture by Shepherd Ndudzo; seating by Theresa-Ann Mackintosh

Newtown Improvement District

 A sculpture tribute to the late great muso, Kippie Moeketsi 

Sunday Times Heritage Project

Over 30 sculptural works by artists living and / or working close to sites all over South Africa. Paying tribute and memorialising untold stories of our country's history in the last 100 years. Highlights include the sculpture of Brenda Fassie in Newtown, Jhb, a tribute to Bruce Fordyce in Durban and a sound-memory of the unofficial anthem 'Mannenberg' by then-Dollar Brand (now Abdullah Ibrahim) in Cape Town. 

For more info on these and other projects click on the EXPERIENCE menu.