As the global art market flounders, bananas and African art market soars

By Mary Corrigall

Nolan Oswald Dennis, a model for Theia (black). Photo by Anthea Pokroy

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The year concluded with a viral art story on the resale of a duct-taped banana for over $6 million (almost R12 million) - Maurizio Cattalan’s 2019 installation fittingly titled Comedian. Ironically, given the sombre news circulating in the art world, it has presented some light relief or a positive sign. Certainly, this is in stark contrast to the art story that kept making headlines throughout the year, which focused on the diminished revenues at the major global art auction houses.  Reports that Sotheby's core earnings were down by 88 % - were particularly chilling, albeit the auction house asserted that this figure had not been properly contextualised.

From this perspective, the inflated figure Cattalan’s ‘banana’ attracted at auction would instil confidence that buyers with deep pockets for art that was not risk averse were still in existence. Of course, such collectors might be tied to the rise and fall of the crypto-currency market - the buyer of Comedian also happened to be the founder of the crypto-currency platform Tron (was this a marketing ploy to direct attention to Tron?). Justin Sun, also happened to be Chinese, affirming that the road to riches in the art market leads to China, aligning with the findings in reports such as The Art Basel UBS Art Market Report 2024 showing that China now claims the second (after the US) largest share of the global art market – pushing the UK to third place.  

Yet, most South African-based galleries are still concentrating on pursuing collectors in the UK,Europe and the US, which has become an important market. This is based on the findings in the latest report funded by Artlib, produced by Corrigall & Co, titled Art Ecosystems 2024: Joburg, Cape Town, Casablanca, Marrakech, Lagos, Abuja. Only a small group of galleries, such as Goodman, SMAC and Guns & Rain have dipped their toes in the Asian market.

Nevertheless, the findings in the aforementioned report depict a more positive narrative of the art market in Africa. The art ecosystems in all three countries are growing, not slowing down – as is the recurring story coming out of the US and the UK, with reports of numerous galleries closing in the past year. More galleries in these African cities are opening than closing. Whether and how this growth can be sustained is the subject of the next report in the making.

The growth on the African continent is in the commercial gallery segment and is “largely due to opportunities that COVID-19 presented - particularly for new, emerging dealers who had access to local and global art markets without being burdened with the heavy overheads that bricks- and-mortar galleries would entail.” This is among many other reasons and contributing conditions in each country and city. Cape Town is leading in terms of the growth of galleries, with Lagos following up closely in front Joburg.

A Cape Town Landscape (2024) Mikhael Subotzky at Goodman Gallery Cape. Photo by Paris B

Certainly in Cape Town, where I am based, at ground level, there has been a lot of activity – you can’t turn a corner without stepping into an art exhibition opening. Of the gallery exhibitions I attended this year, those that stood out were largely by a younger generation. Charity Vilakazi’s Alikho izulu? (Is there no heaven?) staged by Kalashnikovv in their new Cape Town gallery during the inaugural HEAT Festival comes to mind. The sense of play, innocence and curious joy in her work is infectious, palpable via her vibrant palette and her naïve aesthetic.

It was out of town in the Winelands at Boshendal, where Elana Brundyn has established a gallery where another compelling show of the year was staged – Lebohang Kganye’s The Sea is History and a solo exhibition Mmoloki wa Mehopolo: Breaking Bread with a Wanderer. Kganye’s art has been doing the European museum circuit, so it was exciting to view some of her new photographic works and a series of pop-up books in person and see how she has evolved from recounting her own history, eventually blowing up archival images to life-size,  to that of the stories of people who once manned lighthouses – a now obsolete role.  It was no surprise to learn that she later picked up the prestigious Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize.

Another novel use of photographic material that caught my eye was Mikhael Subotzy’s ‘woven’ sticky-tape’ transfers works at his exhibition Home Building Ideas for South Africa (or A Cape Town Landscape) at the Goodman Gallery Cape Town. This visual medium has proven to be an apt vehicle to articulate the overlapping histories of parts of Cape Town, where the lines between the past, the present and the idealised are enmeshed. Also like Kganye, this novel language he has evolved situates his photographic works, such as the centre-piece of this exhibition a 9.5 metre-long installation, ‘A Cape Town Landscape’(2024),  as sculptures, three-dimensional objects.

It was once again in the winelands where I found myself seduced by another exhibition, in the form of Marlene Steyn’s survey exhibition Tussen my oë (Between my eyes) that opened at the University of Stellenbosch museum during Woordfees, where she was selected as the festival artist. The array of, if not excess of, painted and sculptural self-portraits  for which she has become known, solidified both the horror of being unable to escape the self but also the comfort and ease in which one can also burrow safely from the world in the idealised fantasy of one’s own reflection or conception of selfhood.

Another highlight in Cape Town would have to be Nolan Oswald Dennis’s Understudies which is still showing at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art. This exhibition is visually and ideologically compelling fusing art, science, and astronomy. In his quest to challenge a North-centric perspective of the sky and constellations, the artist creates immersive floor-to-ceiling works, such as "Black Liberation Zodiac" (2018). He also reconfigures world globes, transforming them into black calabashes adorned with cowrie shells, thereby 'Africanising' them. Through these works, he effectively highlights how the concept of 'sight' itself was colonised. His programme of decolonising how we read the cosmos, via reconstituting how we view ourselves in relation to the universe is successful particularly because he also draws on visual theatrics, and drama (think dark rooms, emotive music and sounds) extending his characteristic black and white blackboard aesthetic.

The first in a trilogy of exhibitions under the Worldmaking rubric, titled Ecospheres, at the Johannesburg Contemporary Art Foundation (JCAF), was undoubtedly a highlight of the year in Joburg. Clive Kellner is setting new curatorial stands at JCAF with regards to advancing narratives via the visual arts that is unparraelled at any institution in our country. In this extraordinary exhibition, Kellner follows in the footsteps of artists in his interest to harness the invisible – water, air and earth. He pulls it off via a considered selection of artworks that are not only produced by the who’s-who of our artworld presently- Bronwyn Katz, Zizipho Poswa - but lesser known artists those that provide an imaginative articulation of a particular aspect of the titular ecosphere. This would include Sutapa Biswa's, Time Flies, which presents portraits of real and fictional birds or Jonah Sack’s stylised renditions of different Joburg thunderstorms in Thunderstorm Typology (2020). Naturally, the inclusion of live plants in the exhibition, in the form of the eye-pleasing  hydroponic plant installation work by Ximena Garrido-Lecca titled Insurgencias botánicas: Phaseolus lunatus (Botanical insurgencies: Phaseolus lunatus) (2017) also stands out if only for the fact that it demanded natural light into the gallery to allow the work to grow. This pleasingly disrupted traditional notions about museums as dark spaces where ‘dead’ objects are preserved.

Installation view showing Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Insurgencias
botánicas: Phaseolus lunatus (Botanical insurgencies: Phaseolus
lunatus) (2017) at the Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation's Ecosophere's exhibition. © Ximena Garrido-Lecca. Photo Graham De Lacy.

The sense of literal and curatorial vitality at JCAF is in stark contrast to the Joburg Art Gallery, which also made headlines in the last month, with financial journalists ‘exposing’ its decline.  This has been well-known in art circles for the last decade or so, but certainly it has slid even further into a state of disrepair. That part of its valuable collection is reported to be held in the defunct coffee shop which is well-lit and not temperature controlled and works from it have wound their way to auction houses (who fortunately refused to consign the work) and the lack of transparency about the conditions (according to a report on News 24) make for disturbing news.

With this in mind, any future ambitions for 2025 would have to include the JAG collection finding another home.

There are a number of art events to look forward to from the Sue Williamson survey exhibition opening at Iziko SA Museum, to the next edition of the Stellenbosch Triennale, which is once again curated by Khanyisile Mbongwa.  The theme is Ba’zinzile: A Rehearsal For Breathing with its main curated programme including artworks produced by Kganye and Simphiwe Ndzube. Its On the Cusp exhibition, which features works by rising artists will prove to be exciting with the likes of Simphiwe Buthelezi, Manyaku Mashilo and Tuli Mekondjo presenting new works.

Many will be making a beeline for the Norval Foundation when Billie Zangewa's survey show will open there in February. Later in the year another highly anticipated exhibition featuring Brett Murray's contentious oeuvre will also be a major attraction.

Naturally, as the founder of the HEAT Winter Arts Festival, I am looking forward to its second edition. The theme guiding the art and curation is titled Other Worlding and encapsulates artists who use the prism of speculation to reconsider the past, present and future.

Cover of African Ecosystems 2024: Joburg, Cape Town, Casablanca, Marrakech, Lagos, Abuja and stat from the report

Corrigall is a Cape Town based commentator, researcher and founder of the HEAT Festival. To buy a copy of the Art Ecosystems 2024: https://www.corrigall.org/shop