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Legacy: Germination and Future

Co-founder and honorary director DAVID KOLOANE recalls how the Bag Factory was born

When I started my career as an artist, studio culture, which is taken for granted in the visual arts discipline as a basic prerequisite, was virtually non-existent for those who grew up in South Africa’s townships.

The South African Association of Arts, initiated in 1945, catered primarily to white artists. The Association acquired studio facilities within the Cité Internationale des Arts studio complex in Paris, which was, at the time, the artistic capital of the world. The studios were the preserve of white artists.

Meanwhile, life in the townships was a often a dance with chance whereby you did not know if you would survive the day to sleep at home or in a crowded jail teeming with criminals or, for that matter, in a hospital bed.

The conditions under which most black African artists worked were not conducive to creativity, yet there were those who transcended their conditions to produce work comparable to some of the best in the world. Among these were Ezrom Legae, Louis Maqhubela, Lucky Sibiya and Helen Sebidi. Still, in anticipation of a gloomy future and the advent of the dreaded apartheid legislation, two of the most outstanding of these talents, Gerard Sekoto and Ernest Mangcoba, felt the need to expand their horizons outside the borders of South Africa and the continent. A later generation of artists belonging to the Polly Street era of the 1960s also followed suit, including Dumile Feni in 1968 and Maqhubela in 1972.

In 1982 the internationally renowned sculptor, Sir Anthony Caro, and Robert Loder, a fellow Briton and arts benefactor, initiated the Triangle International Artists Workshop in the upstate area of New York. Although initially conceived as a programme for artists from Great Britain, Canada and the United States, it was later opened to any country. On a visit to South Africa, Caro persuaded me to apply and I was accepted to participate in the second Triangle Workshop.

When I arrived in London after participating in this legendary two-week workshop in New York, I was invited by some artists to work with them in their studio collective in Stockwell, South London. They were working in an old bus depot converted into studio units, made available by the local council for a nominal rental fee. My experience at the Stockwell Depot Studios accorded me the privilege of working in a collective studio situation without any form of discrimination on the basis of colour or culture, enabling me to work and operate on a professional level, as opposed to the necessarily ad hoc approach common among township-based artists. The studio often transformed into a laboratory in which the artists examined and assessed one another’s art making processes, techniques and materials.

The Thupelo art project, founded in 1985 was the appropriate vehicle for driving the workshop concept locally. Thupelo is a Tswana/Sotho name meaning ‘teach by example’, and the programme enabled numerous artists from different areas of the country to work together in a venue outside of the city grind and its distractions. The concept was primarily intended to encourage artists to explore and experiment with different materials and techniques, and to exchange ideas. The process was also intended to discourage formulaic stereotypical expression, which resulted in the ‘township-art’ label in the marketplace.

The Thupelo workshop programme’s influence on the international arena was in essence a revolutionary one and was soon adopted by neighbouring countries, such as Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Mozambique, primarily because of common problems of access, a white-controlled art market and related factors. The concept then spread to the East – first India and later Singapore, Hong Kong and Beijing. Later still to the Caribbean islands of Jamaica and Trinidad, as well as Latin America…

The Bag Factory, a collective studio space, which grew out of the Thupelo concept, was initiated in 1991 under the official name of the Fordsburg Artists’ Studios. Over the past decade or so, it has become one of the most significant artistic sites in the history of South Africa and the continent in general. The Bag Factory offered one of the first residency programmes on the continent and in the world. Our first African residency artist was Atta Kwami from Ghana in 1997. Atta’s impact on the outreach programme as well as his interaction with other artists from different institutions endeared him to the local art fraternity.

South Africa has always been perceived as a cultural backwater, often receiving information 15 to 20 years passed. So who would have thought that the first honestly integrated multicultural institution would be established in South Africa? The ironic yet curious aspect of state repression was the fact that it compelled artists to be alert and improvisational, inventive and innovative, in order to stay one step ahead of the system as far as creative expression was concerned.

So what is unique about the Bag Factory? You may ask how different is it from other studio initiatives sprouting locally and internationally? The Bag Factory is not so much a copy of any model in evidence anywhere in the world, but has always been perceived as a vehicle for the promotion of racial tolerance not only in South Africa but the entire world.

At its best the studio and workshop concept is flexible in shape – flexible to any form or situation. It can be triangular, hexagonal, trapezoid, yet surprisingly there is no room for squares. Several institutions and personalities who have attempted to mould the project into a rigid and controllable form have failed dismally because there simply is no room for squares. The concept can only thrive when implemented inventively with innovative programmes emanating from its multifunctional space.

South Africa, and Johannesburg in particular, could become the pulse and nerve centre of the continental network. However, vision and a determined approach are essential to the success of this challenge, which flows into the Bag Factory’s plans for expansion and reinvention, charting new beginnings. The roll call of the artists on our residency archives already constitutes a global mapping of sorts, flavoured with a variety of cultures from Cuba to Norway, Zimbabwe to Jamaica, from Johannesburg to Delhi, from Australia to Mauritius and from Cape to Cairo. Let’s make it happen! – November 2007

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