What's Up With the Durban Art Scene?
What's Up With the Durban Art Scene?
By Amy-Jo Windt
Is the art scene in our city all that it's cracked up to be, or should we be doing more? Are we just a small community that does not extend itself further than necessary? What more can we truly do to improve things in our slow paced town?
These are the questions I asked a varied group of individuals from in and around the art scene in Durban: Shawn Banks (who has worked in the LA art community, and who now works and lives in Durban), Vaughn Sadie (a resident Durban artist), and Candida Pestana (a visiting exchange student from Portugal, who has participated in residencies in America as well as in Europe).
The South African and more specifically the Durban art scene has plenty of potential that just needs to be discovered in the fine art, graphic art and film, Durban needs to make itself heard! "Durban's fine arts community is still very much in the beginning stages", remarked Banks, who was present at the Johannesburg Art Fair last year, where she witnessed that "less than 5% of participants were from the KZN region."
Sadie suggests the reason for the lack of representation in mainstream Art Fairs is "because mainstream art media mostly supports that which happens in established galleries and institutions. With Durban not having many commercial galleries it is often under-represented in the national media". This results in "the inclusion of Durban artists in a debate as often an afterthought for a scramble for a name that can be remembered."
However Durban Art has a lot of potential that is unfortunately overlooked by those in the main stream galleries and institutions. For example, all the winners of the MTN New Contemporaries competition have come from our town, as well as the last two Standard Bank Young Artists having graduated from Durban University of Technology (DUT). These facts seem to be ignored in the grand scheme of things, and stated by Sadie, Durban "artists share limited support, and as an arts community we support each other as much as we can."
Pestana believes we should get more active in including other art centres in this country with that of Durban, and bringing them to us. With the commencement of new festivals, exhibitions, concerts and event art fairs. She states that "Durban has a lot of potential to make things happen, [but] what happens is most of the artists leave Durban to other places, so the system doesn't grow." The inclusion of art as a compulsory practice in schools should also be introduced. Pestana believes by involving the youth from a young age will bring public awareness up.
I then come to the next problem, which seems to be a common thought through the responses from Banks, Sadie and Pestana: the lack of funding in the arts, particularly in Durban. Banks believes our solution to the problem is to "form a union with another sector, i.e. private sponsorships, awareness campaigns, [or] various forms of design". She states that there is so much in a city that includes art, but which the public does not realise. Entrepreneurs are what we need, is the common thread.
Overall the thought is that Durban has so much to offer, yes we have obstacles to overcome, but Durban does have a voice, and as small as it is at the moment, it is believed Durban can create its own unique place in our countries ever growing cultural sectors. Durban will make itself heard.
