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Struggle stalwarts, their families, business associates and folks from the local art world came together on Thursday night at the Old Fort at Constitution Hill in Johannesburg to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the South African Constitution with an art exhibition that memorialised the big events on the road to democracy.
The exhibition, called It’s a Fine Line, was organised in collaboration with the Ichikowitz Family Foundation – the philanthropic arm of controversial defence company Paramount Group, which is owned by industrialist and arms dealer Ivor Ichikowitz.
Work by Dean Simon, the artist behind the controversial Madiba Last Supper work that sold for R16 million at auction recently, was set within the old jail cells, formerly the reserve of Boers such as Paul Kruger, but later also holding veterans Joe Slovo, Albert Luthuli and Robert Sobukwe.
As Dawn Robertson, the CEO of Constitution Hill, pointed out in her opening speech, many of the guests in the audience were either once imprisoned at the Old Fort themselves, were the family of prisoners or were involved in securing the prisoners their freedom.
It was kind of surreal to sit alongside former deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe, who walked into the event with people bustling around him hoping to score a selfie with the man himself.
Mathews Phosa was also there, as was Advocate George Bizos, who defended many of the guests in the court itself.
Also in attendance was former Constitutional Court Justice Zak Yacoob, who gave a rousing speech.
He remains an epic speaker and left me, as I’m sure he did many others, utterly inspired.
The event itself was good: there were enough drinks and snacks, and the entertainment was fabulous.
Simon’s work was really appropriate for the Old Fort and the nature of Constitution Hill, but in terms of the hanging of the work and the curation, there was much that could have been done to make things a little bit fresher.
With heritage work such as Simon’s, the way you treat the hanging of it immediately makes it more accessible and current, but unfortunately the framing was old-fashioned, and displaying the work on easels was tired and uninspired.
The installations in the cells were more contemporary, though, and would have been enough to carry the exhibition if there weren’t enough resources to handle the original works the way they should have been.
But aside from that, it was a great night. It’s always humbling to be at the Old Fort and to consider what it was that got us to where we are today – and it was a welcome respite from the tumultuousness of the week that was.
