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Mozambique, 2010

Printed on the temporary fencing surrounding a construction site at Maputo airport, Stephen Hobbs notices a strip of bold Chinese characters.  Below it, an accompanying line of text offers an English version: Be careful in the working radius.  Both the Asian text and its corresponding translation appeal to Hobbs’s creative sensibilities: the foreignness of the former’s strokes – which exist for Hobbs as graphic symbols that resist linguistic interpretation – extrinsically sited in the context of a developing African city, and the latter’s potential for multiple readings in processes of production and meaning-making.

Johannesburg, 2013

Mounted on the wall at David Krut Projects, I notice Stephen Hobbs’ test print of Chinese characters that spell out a cautionary instruction not uncommon to construction hoardings in Southeast Asia, where I lived for three years.  When Hobbs next returns to the studio, I use my basic knowledge of Mandarin picked up during that time to articulate my own understanding of each character and character-grouping: isolating definitions and deconstructing the logogrammatic parts, mapping out a more detailed explanation.  Hobbs has arranged the characters as a nine-square grid – echoing a city grid plan and upon which, fortuitously, all Chinese character strokes are also formatted.  This geometric proportioning is consistent with the fēng shǔi (风水) principle of balance, historically used to orient buildings.  New layers of meaning begin to resonate with that dialogue between information- and city-structures which informs Hobbs’ intentions.  “Be careful in the working radius” is more of a paraphrased equivalent than a direct translation – something idiomatic conversions need to negotiate in order to make coherent sense – and yet it is within the clumsiness of the text’s literal breakdown where meaning is most illuminated.  Some things are lost in translation; some things are gained.

Full sentence:

作业半径内注意安全 (Zuòyè bànjìng nèi zhùyì ānquán)
= “Be careful in the working radius”

Individual characters:

作 (zuò)
= (v.) make, do, compose
= (n.) work, writing

业 (yè)
= (v.) practise a profession
= (n.) industry, business, enterprise

半 (bàn)
= (n.) half

径 (jìng)
= (n.) path, means, diameter

内 (nèi)
= (prep.) within, inside

注 (zhù)
= (v.) note, register, record

意 (yì)
= (v.) advise, suggest, propose
= (n.) meaning, intention, sense*

安 (ān)
= (v.) pacify, fix
= (n.) peace
= (adj.) safe, secure, quiet, calm**

全 (quán)
= (adj.) whole, entire, complete

Character-groupings (concepts):

作业(zuòyè)
= (n.) operation, work, production

半径(bànjìng)
= (n.) radius

注意(zhùyì)
= (v.) take note, pay attention, heed, mind

安全(ānquán)
= (n.) safety, security

* 意 contains 音 (yīn) meaning “sound”/”tone”, and 心 (xīn) meaning “heart”

** 安 contains the same overarching “roof” or “ceiling” stroke as 家 (jiā) meaning “home”, and 女 (nǚ) which refers to the “feminine”

Pseudo/re-imagined translations:

“We advise caution along the path of industry.”
“Pay attention to safety inside the business arena.”
“Heed security measures in the vicinity of production.”
“Take precaution upon entering professional environments.”
“Please mind defence strategies at work.”
“Find shelter under the composition structures.”
“Record harmonious means of making.”
“Note quiet meaning within the practice of writing.”
“Observe the pacified whole in creation.”

- Kate Arthur, April 2013

When approaching the David Krut Print Workshop (DKW) in 2009, the initial intention was to embark on a new making process, with the simplistic objective of realising multiples or editioned works. Despite the pleasure of producing Fool’s Gold shown at David Krut Projects in 2010 and some small print projects in 2011/12, this exhibition is perhaps most representative of the challenge that a committed body of print works represents to its makers.

Since the beginning of this collaboration there has been a desire to three-dimensionalise plates once the printing was over, treating them as construction sites with a vision for new appendages or armatures emerging from or cladding them. I was less aware, however, of the formal interconnectedness of the stages involved in the production of a final print, or perhaps I’d just forgotten (it’s nearly 20 years since the late Colin Richards taught me etching and woodblock printing at Wits).

My primary place of comfort, as it has been for many years now, is my laptop screen where most ‘drawing’ gets done by scanning from note books and transforming the images in Photoshop. Going into the workshop at Arts on Main is like going back to art school, where one actually makes things. It’s terrifying, you make a mark, you print that mark, which brings the proofing process into sharp focus. These printed surfaces hold intermediary logics which allow for ‘unique’ once off manipulations, thus becoming final works or, more obviously, serving as prompts for the next round of cutting and proofing

Given the understanding of my plate-to-sculpture intentions, Talya Lubinsky (the DKW printer with whom I worked on the project) and I decided upfront that we would work in wood and lino, lending both the right material surface for the image-making in mind and enough maliability for repurposing as an object later on.

The unexpected part of all of this is the action experienced on this construction site, so to speak. For a while – many months in fact – production floats and then anchors and then floats again. This is the best description for now to translate the movement between the printing press in the workshop, work on drawing and cutting boards in my studio, digital manipulations of intermediary stages of an image – to make personal sense of the direction a work is taking, as much as to keep the workshop production team in the loop. And then things really heat up: it’s the generative nature of collaboration over the press and all the elements described here combined, where the basis of a body of work starts interrelating and a visual language begins to communicate the conceptual aspects of images, until there is relative balance between unique works, BATs for editioning, paper objects and collages, and deconstructed wood blocks and lino plates.

While the title for this exhibition was generated quite serendipitously, as Kate Arthur explains, it is most apt for my work in general and for the radius of the workshop – a ‘positive-danger-zone’, in that starting something there requires a lot of commitment, energy and focus. These are clichés indeed in that there are so many artists I admire precisely for these qualities, qualities I feel I have had to re-engage for a new making reality.

The interest in reflecting on this body of work here is about a concern that the workshop is an often misunderstood space, at first glance beaming with productive properties but equally puzzling, not unlike Johannesburg, which for me since the early nineties has felt like a construction site, a work in progress. For my own contradictory interests I wish it to remain ambiguous and unresolved, as this keeps me focused and interested in the place and others like it.

With this body of work it is intended, therefore, that the viewer is sensitised to visual shifts between works, evidence of decision making ‘in the working radius’ where the landscape presented is self-referential and seemingly incomplete.

- Stephen Hobbs, April 2013

David Krut Projects is pleased to present the limited edition artist’s pop-up book which will be showcased in Stephen Hobbs’ new solo exhibition, Be careful in the working radius, on show from 30 May – 13 July.  The edition of twelve handmade books forms part of a new body of work produced in collaboration with the David Krut Print Workshop and visiting U.S. book artist, Ingrid Schindall.  It functions as the binding work of the exhibition, encompassing Hobbs’ conceptual practice of engaging the field of architecture as a site for visionary thinking.  The book itself is a form of paper architecture, containing three-dimensional pages that provide a visual link to structures referenced in Hobbs’ work.

The black-and-white book-object consists of ten double page spreads, six of which reveal pop-ups of varying movable mechanics.  Pop-up books have been in existence for centuries, and were historically used in scholarly works of anatomical and astronomical sciences.  It was only in the 18^th century that these paper engineering techniques were applied to books designed for entertainment, particularly for children.  Whether the technicality of a pop-ups is rudimentary of sophisticated, there is nonetheless something of a childlike intrigue in the act of turning a page and activating that shift from a two-dimensional plain to a three-dimensional structure.

A wonderment at the mechanics of Hobbs’ pop-ups and the intrigue of “the miniature”, together with pages of varied patterning and optical illusions, invite an absorptive process of looking.  The book includes found text and handwritten mind-maps, stylised networks and city grids, scaffolding and empty billbaord structures, blocked patterns and dazzle camouflage – a zebra-like pattern used particularly on gunships in the early 1900s to fragment the visual field of enemy sites in combat situations. Although dazzle patterning became obsolete after World War I, Hobbs has mined the potential that visual deceptions present for aesthetic reflection on the dystopian city, and in this case highlights the complex and abstract nature of processing information in frenzied urban environments.

The technical production of the book was managed by Ingrid Schindall, a printmaker from Baltimore who specialises in book-binding, and took place over a period of approximately three months.  The page designs are an extension of the editioned and unique works Hobbs has produced in collaboration with the David Krut Print Workshop, and were silkscreen printed in the studio by the production team.  Parts for the pop-up pages were meticulously cut out by hand and finally assembled and bound.  Besides the use of an industrial guillotine to trim the page blocks to a standardised size, the books are entirely handmade.

As both a book and arts publishing organisation, David Krut Projects values the connection between book- and art-making practices established through this project.  The coming together of artists of distinct – though not entirely dissimilar – craft and cultural context resulted in a dynamically creative relationship.  This kind of inter-disciplinary and international exchange – consolidated here in the form of an artist’s book – is a new and important collaborative endeavour for David Krut Projects, and hopefully the first of many to come.

SPECIFICATIONS:

Conceptualized in Feb – April 2012 with Ingrid Schindall
Production April – May 2013

Book printed by hand on Velato Avorio paper – 200gsm for pop-up pieces and 280gsm for silkscreen spreads.
Silkscreened with black waterbased ink for all spreads but one – printed in  a black+transparency for gray.
Solely glue binding and no sewing (bound the same way as the “jungle” book binding technique).
All pages but one are glued together with archival glue, one spread is taped together using double-sided archival framing tape.
Cover is Irish Linen book cloth silkscreened with opaque white water-based silkscreen ink.

11 double spreads; 5 pop-up spreads, 5 silkscreen pages (one with reflective tape), 1 pull down page with 7 moving pieces.

Silkscreen printed by Ingird Schindall; assisted by Chad, Luke and Neo
Production and assembly: Charlotte Johnson, Karena Liebetrau, Tanya Sack, Kate Arthur
Much thanks to Alan Jeffery at Brenthurst for his assistance with providing information, sourcing materials and use of his studio.

The festival runs from 17 – 19 May.
Visit Ebony at 32 Hugenot Road, Franschoek.
The installation will run until 8 June.

Here are a few pics from the installation process.

Read more about Remote Projections.
See more pics on Facebook.

Thanks to Bradlox Vans and Colin Meyer – ||Hui !Gaeb di Khoen (Cape Town’s People) – for a fabulous performance. Thanks also to the Centre for Popular Memory for the use of their sound equipment and to photographers Beth Armstrong and Niklas Zimmer for documenting the event.

More images from the event on Facebook, click here.

Artists include Ryan Arenson, Beth Armstrong, Lynda Ballen, Emalie Bingham, Stuart Cairns, Vanessa Cowling, Faith47, Justin Fox, Mischa Fritsch, Stephen Hobbs, William Kentridge, Francois Krige, Carla Liesching, Tammy MacKay, Virginia MacKenny, Dillon Marsh, Joshua Miles, Andrzej Nowicki, Dan Perrone, J. H. Pierneef, Gregor Röhrig, Sean Slemon, Sydelle Willow Smith, Subtle Agency, Lyn Smuts, Gary Stephens, Chris Swift and Diane Victor.

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Below are images of Bell signing the prints along with DKW printmaker Mlungisi Kongisa. Both editions are now available from David Krut Projects in either Parkwood or Arts on Main in Johannesburg or from the Montebello Design Centre in Newlands, Cape Town.

2013 marks the centenary of Francois Krige’s birth and it is therefore appropriate that The Benediction of Shade exhibition includes a delightful selection of tree drawings and paintings by Krige. The Benediction of Shade is a group show of works related to the metaphors and imagery of trees and work by over 25 artists is included.

Throughout his artistic career, Krige was fascinated by the forms and textures of trees. He drew a vast array of trees in many terrains such as the Kalahari, the Namibian desert, in Botswana and in the Koo Valley near to Montagu, where he lived. Francois Krige was also a war artist during the Second World War and in order to escape the many horrors of war, Krige would resort to painting landscapes that spoke of the tragedies during this time.

The oldest painting featured in The Benediction of Shade is Sangro Valley sketched painting in 1944 when Krige was in Italy. Krige signed up as a war artist in 1941 and for the first few years he spent much time working in North Africa in the desert war. However, in 1944 when the Allied forces invaded Italy, he joined a convoy that was destined for this Axis country. Krige was shocked by the devastation he witnessed in Italy and was moved by the residents’ plight. As Justin Fox has explained, “In the countryside the peasants tried to conduct a normal life and continued to bring in the olive crops”[1] despite the great loss of loved ones and the devastating effects the war had on the landscape. In order to escape the suffering he was experiencing, Krige found a way to the nearby town of Vasto, a fishing village in Italy. This little village had managed to keep the charm of a Mediterranean fishing centre and here Krige was able to paint brightly coloured fishing boats and depicted the scenic vistas as land met the Adriatic Sea.

After returning to South Africa, Krige spent some time living with his parents in Constantia, Cape Town. This was in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s when Constantia was still a rural farming community and not the residential area that it has now become. During this period Krige painted Pagasvlei, Constantia. It is a watercolour depicting farm folk resting under the shade of a willow tree. It is quite apt for the name of this exhibition, The Benediction of Shade. There are underlying implications in this watercolour as some of the figures are resting in the shade of the tree whilst one figure is working.

Later in Francois Krige’s life he and his wife Sylvia would annually travel into the Northern Cape in their kombi[2] on artistic expeditions.  On some of these trips they would continue to the Gemsbok Park in the Kalahari. It was there in the Kalahari Desert that Krige would frequently draw Acacia trees, an example of this being Acacia and Rocks drawn in 1984 on one of these expeditions. He has captured the form of these trees with strong outlines and subtle sections of shading.  Krige enjoyed venturing into the desert where he would sketch plants that managed to survive the barren and hazardous conditions of the Kalahari. These included the famous Welwitschia, otherwise known as the ‘desert octopus’, kokerbooms, euphorbias, tiny succulents and, whenever the opportunity presented itself, the Baobab commonly referred to as ‘the upside down tree’.  Krige’s Post-Impressionist style allowed him to approach his tree subjects with an individual handling of line and texture.

During much of his life, Krige loved to spend time painting in areas close to his home town of Montagu in the Western Cape. One of these areas was Kogmanskloof. Krige’s wife, Sylvia, often remembered him setting out early in the morning to explore Kogmanskloof where he would find a new composition that stimulated him. The unusual rock formations with trees and plants situated amongst these formations made for fascinating tableaus. This setting also suited Krige’s style of painting that was similar to that of the Post-Impressionists, in which objects painted in hot colours approached the viewer and objects painted in cool colours receded. The bright red rocks, the vital blue sky and the intense green of the trees all lent themselves to this style of painting.

Sylvia and Francois Krige’s friends, the Pienaars, had a farm deep in the Koo Valley. Every winter the Kriges would look after the farm whilst the family was away and it made for a perfect place for Francois to go exploring. Tolbos was painted on the mountain slopes of the Pienaar’s farm. This painting is an excellent example of Krige’s Post-Impressionist and Impressionist style of painting. The strong and vivid colours attract the viewer immediately and draw them into the depicted landscape. The flattened background creates tension between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional space. [3] There are echoes of Paul Cezanne in this painting, even though Krige’s “intentions remained more realist than Cezanne’s”[4].

The imagery of trees has been an integral part of Francois Krige’s career as an artist. It is fascinating to see how he was continually drawn to them throughout his life, including them in all the landscapes that he came to appreciate. He was particularly interested in the flora of the more rugged landscapes such as Namibia and the Kalahari, while some of the most vivid paintings featuring trees are those depicting the Koo Valley. It is impressive to witness how balanced the trees are in these compositions and one hopes that these beautiful depictions of a natural world that is fast disappearing will continue to enlighten viewers for generations to come.