This is particularly poignant because a lot of public advertising goes unchecked, and a few select people benefit from it and are making loads of dosh off it. What stings is that they’re profiting off our public space, off our visual landscape. It’s offensive. Graffiti on the other hand, is in many cases a visceral reaction to advertising, it’s showing that individuals share the space too… Who gets to decide what stays and what goes? 

I’m not here to espouse the virtues of graffiti, but I am here to say that how we react to it, how we respond to it, and how we deal with it is important. In December 2023, Jono aka Hide wrote an open letter to our town, Hilton, because someone (we now know it’s a group of young teenagers) was overzealous with a can of black spray paint. His letter was a masterclass in diplomacy. 

Sort-of similarly, a few years ago, someone tagged the Basilica de Santa Maria del Pi. This was illegal graffiti and the church denounced it… From there controversy erupted, the media got involved, and the church realised it had to reach out to a collective of mural artists. The mural artists and the church then developed a project to equally serve the views of the church, urban art, citizens, and public space. It was a superhuman effort in diplomacy and group work. 

The artist Aryz (Octavi Arrizabalaga) was commissioned because he is an artist who knows a whopping amount about religious art history. He was tasked with painting a 14m x 10m canvas to install in the church as a symbol of how modern art can be integrated into old spaces. In an interview, Aryz says, “For me, the dialogue between the piece and its surroundings is fundamental and there is a direct dialogue between the architecture of the church, and the piece.” The idea of street art and mural art is to always reference the space and that’s why it’s unique. Public art is as much about the space as it is about the piece… It’s a dance.   

Aryz, like most street artists, understands this dance because he began his journey with graffiti and learned about communicating through art and space. His style developed, and now he is a renowned street artist and canvas artist through his epic (and I mean that in the traditional sense of the word) installations. 

The Crianca (Child) project launched as a convergence of the past and the future and showed that there is a place for modern street art and mural art in traditional spaces. The overarching message is that if government institutions, municipalities, and cities were more open to discussions about legal and curated street art, then this would have a positive impact on stamping out or at least lessening illegal graffiti. The way to nurture local talent and allow it to grow, is not done through painting over illegal graffiti and ignoring the problem. It is done through active engagement, and opening up public space and dialogue to allow artists to work with communities to create everyday magic. 

“We live constantly overstimulated at a time when everything is immediate and it is almost revolutionary the fact that you can go to a place to look at a piece quietly. That a coat of paint on canvas can transmit or generate a feeling to a person like it has done for centuries, for me it’s magic. And that it continues to be meaningful in these spaces of reflection and contemplation is also magic. Because reflection and contemplation are fundamental in art. Because if a film, a text, a book, a song, or a painting can make you think… This is the meaning of art, because change can come from reflection.” (Aryz: 2023)

On our spectacular tour of Prague, where the old seems to be suspended in a time capsule, we were fucking delighted to know that Aryz was exhibiting less than 800m from our hostel. I didn’t know what to expect, but Jono was absolutely bibbing with excitement… I think the equivalent would be if I went to a book reading by Ivan Vladislavic. The exhibition titled Vestigio, immediately ignited something in me. Titles are important, and vestiges of the past have always resonated with me, I knew the exhibition was going to be incredibly rad. 

But not as rad as it was. 

Even if you’re not the type of person who likes to ponder over art and look for, “What is the artist trying to say here?” You’re going to dig what you see when you look at Aryz’s art. At it’s most basic level, Aryz uses a very specific and distinct colour palette and there’s a calmness to it. This calmness is juxtaposed with the fragmented nature of his compositions and the disturbing “seeing inside” element that he creates with some childlike brushwork and some more realistic techniques. This fragmentation is key because Aryz creates a disturbance in his pieces, whether it’s between traditional and postmodern, the past and the future, or nature and unconventional scenery. You look at his art, and you see the world. 

For the avid art lover, Aryz’s art is steeped in a vast knowledge of art history. He references many famous works in his pieces– from frescoes, sculpture, canvases, etc. For the viewer, this means that there’s a familiarity when you look at the art, even if you can’t quite put your finger on it. This creates a sensibility that’s both comfortable and jarring, serene and turbulent. The collage-like quality also provides energy and movement and there’s a humorous nod to the past that he employs. In old paintings, masters would often “correct” mistakes by painting over them. So, if a limb of an animal wasn’t quite correct, it would be painted over and the artist would try again. Often these mistakes could still be subtly recognised in the finished piece. Aryz uses this technique to play on the past, but he also reclaims these “mistakes” as a way to create movement and vitality. In the world of Aryz, it’s literally the more limbs, the merrier. 

Our visual landscape is so oversaturated that we are in the habit of looking, rather than seeing. Aryz gives a lens to reclaim space, history, and how we see the world around us. His work is important because it shows that separating the past from the present, traditional from the modern, and urban from the old world is a recipe for stagnation. Street art and public art are a dialogue that can connect and inspire, and they open our eyes to a new way of seeing. To see the world as it is, and to inspire change, we need to engage, and we need more spaces that stimulate contemplation and reflection. 

The other day I emailed my hero. 

I was thinking about Jono and my vision for Hilton, BOOMTOWN, the gallery, and storytelling. Who’s the landmark writer that I want to attach to a mural? 

Only one name came to mind. A writer who can capture a space, bottle it, shake it around, make it fizz, and then pass it to an unsuspecting human as the ultimate thirst quencher. 

Ivan Vladislavic. 

Open the bottle. I dare you. 

I’d been avoiding writing to him, because we’re told to never reach out to heroes. 

Apparently they’re always a hot mess of disappointment.

Or they ignore you. 

Or worse, they provide a short perfunctory response. The kind of response where you don’t have to be part of the Bletchley Circle to read between the lines. They’re not actually delighted you’ve reached out. Fans are an annoying and necessary evil. And the “luck with future endeavours” they bestow upon you is about as genuine as Balenciaga’s socio-political statement.    

Anyway, luckily for you, and the purposes of this story, “throw caution to the wind” I do not. So taking a note out of my hero’s book I began writing…

Dear Prof Vladislavic… 

It takes only a few words to start something. The spotlight shines brightly, you’re alone on the stage. Self doubt over sounding like an asshole starts to creep in. It’s best to continue and go with it. Wit is there in the background to make a cameo appearance. Reflection settles down the nervous audience. The chorus is there to bring it back when you lose direction. Soon it’s an effortless dance with only a few miss-steps here and there. 

The curtain closes. You press send. You hope the audience is forgiving. 

You wait for the review.  

I expected a long wait. The forgotten ghosts of unresponsive emails egging me on.

And then, five days later, from his private email address, his reply brought the walls of my laptop to life. A voice from amongst the row of lonely silent open tabs.

A landmark.

A reminder to write. A reminder to be patient. A reminder that landmarks are created out of nothing. Every space has the potential to become something more. To become a place.

Stories create paths through the clutter towards landmarks. Landmarks that are created by artists. And if you’re lucky, the community provides the soft landing and believes in, and traverses towards these places.

Welcome to BOOMTOWN. 

PS: Ivan (we’re on a first name basis now) says once he’s finished his new book he might be compelled to write a mural. Luckily, for this developing story, “throw caution to the wind” I do not. Watch these walls.

At Gallery ZAZA, it’s about more than just the art on the walls, it’s about what the walls say – whether it’s gallery walls, or public walls festooned with the imaginings of a street artist or young upstart. This is important, because we’re about to empty the gallery walls for our second exhibition. We’re starting afresh. Wiping the slate clean. And if I’m honest, it’s really difficult to say goodbye to what have become the best work colleagues I’ve ever had (sorry Ron Irwin).

On the mistiest of Hilton days, sodden and a bit miffed, opening the gallery doors to Hussein Salim’s aptly named “Sunny Day” and “Longing,” has been more powerful than my first mug of tea for the day (for those of you who have encountered me sans tea will understand). I’m so attached to “Longing” that I get genuine separation anxiety thinking about saying goodbye. And so I was eternally grateful when Hussein said we could keep this absolutely ravishing canvas in our foyer. Longing.

And then bit by bit, Siyabonga Sikosana’s canvases have started exiting the gallery for what some (not me) would call their “forever homes”. Paintings literally being hugged by their new owners beaming with smiles as if holding a new excitable puppy. I pause to imagine how much colour and joy these artefacts will bring. How they’ll pass between generations, echoing stories of their first home.

Sakhile Mhlongo’s two troublemakers have been “most excellent” colleagues. They’re so badass. These paintings are alive and stare at me every day, as if threatening me that I’m not working hard enough. They’re constant reminders of the beautiful juxtapositions in my life, and they always draw a crowd. I often catch myself looking at “the dude’s” jeans and then feel completely inadequate in my craft. They bring balance, and longing.

Then there’s the absolute joy and terror of being a temporary home to Logan Woolfson’s Rubik’s cube family. “Lucky Star” started to show his rebellious side, or maybe it’s just that he doesn’t dig Hilton weather and wants to adios back to Joburg STAT? In contrast, Logan’s other pieces have adjusted well to their temporary home. But Lucky Star just refused to comply from the get go. And then, one morning, the damp weather proved too much, and instead of opening the doors to an expectant Longing, I was greeted by the gallery floor, completely scattered with kamikaze Rubik’s cube shrapnel. Taking a leaf out of Tracey Emin’s book we improvised, and adopted “art installation,” and it’s amazing how many people haven’t even balked at this. “Lucky Star”, now affectionately known as “Unlucky Star” has become a metaphor for 2021… It really is how you frame it.

The gallery walls are ephemeral, ever changing, and we love that, because nothing lasts forever. It makes us want to live in the moment and to cherish what we have. To stop when we see something beautiful, and to soak it in. The other day Jono and I spent about half an hour watching a troop of monkeys use the parking lot carport netting as a trampoline. We witnessed a baby monkey steal a plastic bag from the alpha male and tease him with it. It was completely magic, and a reminder that there is so much beauty in the world. If you just stop. 

Which leads me to one of those juxtapositions I was banging on about earlier. If you have driven down Chief Albert Luthuli Road recently you would have seen the end of an era. Burczak’s Picture Framers has moved to their new and magnificent site in Victoria Road, and the old building is under construction. All of this seems like progress, except that the Basquiat mural has vanished.

It started with a red tag, blood was drawn. Then a few markings were made on the wall. Scars. Then a few pre-emptive holes were bashed in. Now I’m what some would call a “romantic pessimist”, so I went deep down the path of “no worries, nothing to see here, they’re going to work around it”.

‘Hi my name’s Jaqui, and I’m in denial.’

The thing is, I did actually know what was coming, I just refused to believe that I had to start adhering to all of my ideologies about public art… and ditch the hypocrisy. Street art is by its very nature, temporary. I know this.

But what if you really love it? I am, after all, the child who clapped her way through Peter Pan when Tinkerbell needed reviving, so I’m all on board for a bit of a “if you really believe” chumbawumba. And my internal dialogue was in overdrive thinking, ‘Absolutely some street art is ephemeral, unless you really love it, in which case you can save it by just believing that other people love it as much as you.’ Turns out this doesn’t work. Where the elegant Basquiat once was, is now a white wall and a couple of generic steel doors. Longing.

Ron English is a dude who theorises street art. He explains that street art is a cultural phenomenon, it’s not an art movement. This distinction is important because the very nature of phenomena is that they are beautifully transient, they are the fabric of our memories. They are what Abraham Lincoln would describe as, “the mystic chords of memory”. They form part of those spaces we look back on, they form part of the dialogue of, “remember when that used to be…” or, “there used to be something magical there.” We engage, and we remember, because they’re gone. They remind us not to take what we have for granted. They activate the “better angels of our nature”.

What a dazzling reminder of how to live and how to experience the world. And what a great way to engage, and to share our stories and lived histories. And I really should give you this banger of a Lincoln quote because it’s bloody lovely, ‘The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.’

‘The ghost of Belle Starr, she hands down her wits 

To Jezebel the nun, she violently knits

A bald wig for Jack the Ripper, who sits 

At the head of the Chamber of Commerce.’

Bob Dylan: Tombstone Blues

Fancy a nun being influenced by the 19th century outlaw Belle Starr, the Queen of the Oklahoma Outlaws herself? The female Jesse James. A woman who could outperform most men with a gun, who rode sidesaddle. Belle was probably considered to be too stylish to be an outlaw. Famed for her black velvet riding habit, feathered hat, and festooned with more ammunition than you could shake a stick at. Not to mention the two pistols she was never without. Belle was quite simply, completely kickass. Her death was gruesome, as is the case with most legends. She died fearless and punctured with shotgun bullets. A helluva role model for a nun. 

They say I’m wasted being cloistered in a nunnery. That I’m not investing, or not “cashing in” on my ultimate value. My beauty. Women diluted into loose change. Value being synonymous with external beauty. Woman being exchanged and sold as a type of cryptic currency.

And furthermore, isn’t it cripplingly boring, the simple life? But there’s nothing simplistic about being busy. The simpler you live, the busier you are.

How many individuals are cloistered by things? Stifled by stuff. Smothered by excess? Some of the most bored people have the most. They’re the most ravishing of all the conspicuous consumers who worship false profits. Consumers who judge simplicity as a failure to accumulate. Consumption is the paradox of choice. It debilitates us to the point where we’re so busy choosing that we forget to live. Decisions eating into the currency of time. Commerce is a silent assassin, a killer. It sneaks up, and leaves receipts as the ultimate calling card. 

Maybe I’m playing the fool. Perhaps I really am too beautiful to be a nun? Be wary of false prophets. I could be a rogue Jezebel. 

An impossible oxymoron.

Maybe you think I’m one of those hipster coffee shop lurkers because of my hair and thrift shop sweater? The type who take over the best table and charge every device they own, assault the free wifi, and pretend their lingering presence is because of how ‘mmmm that’s really good coffee’ it is. Hanging on every word.

Coffee is sexy, coffee is reassuringly expensive, coffee is no longer just black or white. Coffee is suggestive. It’s something you come up for, if you’re up for it. But be careful, because coffee also has the habit of kicking you out in the morning. 

And sure, coffee may be a culture, but tea is a lifestyle. It’s an affordable lifestyle, or an ostentatious one. It’s the same brew, it’s just dressed differently. 

The first cup in the morning, the late night natter, afternoon tea with grandparents, Birthday Tea, tea and a biscuit, Christmas Morning Tea, post-breakup tea, celebration tea, apology tea, tea delivered on a tray to a sick bed, school tea out of an urn with the faint glow of burnt milk, the quick chug it down while locating miscreant car keys tea. ‘Quick cup of tea?’ Tea break. ‘Fancy a tea?’ Tea will help. ‘Let’s discuss this over tea.’

‘Ooo I’d love a cup.’ 

Tea is what Cosmo might refer to as the “perfect little black dress”. You can dress it up, or dress it down depending on your mood. Throw in a lovely pair of scones, accessorise with some sugar cubes, ‘How about this understated cucumber sandwich?’ ‘Oh go on and splash out on that slice of Victoria sponge.’ You can’t go wrong with a chic retro teapot, or how about something more boho with a vintage set of cups and saucers? Or just embrace the simplicity and chug it out of a mug while avoiding dropping biscuit crumbs on the floor.

Yes. Perfect for every occasion.

Arguments about milk first or after. Is sugar sacrilege? How long to brew? What brand is best? Is rooibos even tea? Do you squeeze the bag? ‘You use teabags and not leaves?’ ‘Oh my god he squeezes the bag!’ Cup and saucer? Mug? And does anyone own a tea cosy that hasn’t been worn as a hat? 

My paternal grandmother never pretended to be posh but she took tea as seriously as she took the television guide. ‘Albert there’s no way that’s Morse, the television guide says it’s Only Fools and Horses now!’ Tea arrived in a metal teapot, with Dutch white and blue striped tea cups (mostly chipped), saucers, and a matching milk jug. Cake was offered randomly and understated. ‘Who’s for some stale cake?’ On the other hand, my maternal grandmother reckons she’s lank posh, and we don’t argue because she showed us the grape scissors that she pretends she inherited (she bought them). She’s the reason I drink my tea with a whisper of milk so that it looks close enough to coffee to get away with using a mug. Tea is never served in a mug. Never. When grandmother comes to visit we put out a universal call to borrow a tea set, so she can be lulled into a false sense of security that we’re not foul heathens.

Speaking of grannies, in Hilton in the 1980s Five Roses had what they aptly named the “Five Roses Tea Party”. It was hosted at the Hilton Hotel and there was great excitement because Scot Scott arrived in a helicopter. The big show piece was that a bunch of grannies had to do something in order to win the grand prize of their weight in R1 coins. Just before the weigh-in the winning granny went absolutely gangbusters over a black forest gateaux. It wasn’t quite the rumpus of the Boston Tea Party, but it did put Hilton firmly on the map, and on M-Net.

And on that note, is there anywhere you can get a decent cup of tea around here?

Who decided Wayne wasn’t just some juvenile delinquent with a penchant for adrenaline seeking behaviour, but actually an artistic genius who pioneered a movement? What is, after all, art?

I’ve lost count of the occasions walking around a gallery, where some bombastic parent, with a muted pastel crew neck sweater, scoffs about the fact that his son or daughter could do loads better than the artist in question. This dude’s prodigal kid meanwhile, has a sticky lacquer and is busy groping every available artwork and yelling about an imminent snack emergency. Maybe this is performance art? Father and Child: Seen in a Gallery, 2018. 

The perennial question looms, ‘But is it art?’ And our response to this seems to all be in the title, or in the location, or perhaps, it’s all in the frame?

You may be familiar with My Bed. Not my literal bed obviously, this is a family show. My Bed is probably my favourite contemporary example of The Emperor’s New Clothes. And, this is a grandiose claim because for those of you who’ve heard me bleat on before, you’ll know that I am bossies for the Emperor’s clothing metaphor. But stay with me, this is a greatie. My Bed is a 1998 artwork by Tracey Emin, and it is just a dazzling display of how to reframe domestic ineptitude. Watch this space for My Sink, My Laundry Basket, and My Bedroom Chair. I have an overactive imagination and I’ll find a story out of absolutely nothing, but even my propensity to BS my way out of a hat was tested by Tracey’s siff bed. 

Yes, Tracey’s bed is grim. It’s reflective of depression, and a foray into alcohol abuse and using sex as a coping mechanism. Wikipedia nails it by saying, ‘When she looked at the vile, repulsive mess that had accumulated in her room, she suddenly realised what she had created.’ I think the key here is “created”. What a loophole. One woman’s mess, is Charles Saatchi’s next exhibition. And to those parents, and critics, poo-pooing this, Tracey defends herself as a lank trailblazer at the apex of creative genius. Sure your teenager can have a filthy unmade bed, but their failure to exhibit it in a prestigious white-walled gallery is where Tracey’s got the edge. Emin points out, ‘No one had ever done that before.’

That sure is dope Tracey, but is it art?

Is the crux of the matter that art is just about blazing new trails and being the first person to push boundaries a step further than anyone else? Is it by testing the very geography of art? Michael Ondaatje poignantly said, ‘Do you understand the sadness of geography?’ The very fact that geography stifles us is because it draws lines, defines boundaries, and declares borders.

So is something art because of its geography – where it’s placed?

As we understand it, art happens in a space. If tradition is anything to go by, these spaces are white walls owned by white faces. Traditionally, art is art, because it happens in a vacuum. But what does this do to storytelling and expression? Mapping, boundaries, ownership, geography, are prescriptive, and that’s not to say we don’t need structure, of course we do. However, we need to be able to reframe, to break rules, to make a mess. As my legendary English teacher Moira Lovell told me, ‘You can break the rules when you know them.’ 

Is rule breaking the essence then? Is it in understanding the distinction between a morose teen scratching their initials into a desk, using a permanent marker to write E+K 4Eva on a bathroom door, spraying YOLO over an existing piece of street art, or actually understanding how rules can be broken to create order?  

Creating order out of chaos is no mean feat. It’s an exercise in “iconoclashism”. Tension occurs when we observe clashes between cultures, where we change the visual landscape of public space, when we create, react, and respond. In short, it’s when humans move from passivity to interactivity. And it’s in asking questions about whose public space we are cultivating.

The normative happy medium is the reason we have Christmas cracker jokes, beige colour palettes, and elevator music. These “inoffensive” public systems are developed because they’re neutral and therefore no one can take umbrage to them. But what happens if you’re not neutral and are highly offended by panpipes playing Strangers in the Night, or working in a municipal building with yellowing beige walls? Is public life supposed to be moving from one space to the next in a state of catatonic bland liminality. Should we not be engaged in public space?

The theorist Clements highlights the fact that we need to engage with communication and space. We need to look at context and discourse. He observes that a shift happens when art is ‘displayed in public as opposed to hermetically sealed white cube gallery spaces’. When this happens we can change the frame and art can ‘become the central focus for a range of competing discourses.’ Applying this argument, we become better citizens of the world when we are faced with questions, when we encounter struggle, and when we observe clashes. 

The latest clash in Hilton is not just manifesting on election posters (yuck), but it’s being whispered in passing. To be honest I’m surprised Hilton Chat isn’t going gangbusters about it, but I think electricity is occupying most of the bandwidth. Here’s the thing, someone has “vandalised” the community Rainbow Bridge. A woman literally came into the gallery and announced that everyone needs to be angry about this. It’s “unacceptable”. It’s “diabolical”. It’s “not right”.

Jono and I immediately drove to the tunnel to look for the offending graffiti, and I won’t lie I was hoping for more. I was hoping for a rich combustive expletive. Instead I got “YOLO”.

Although well done, is there a more offensively beige phrase than YOLO? Are the millennials trolling us?

Sure, there was a time when YOLO was cool, and for a moment it was akin to saying cowabunga in the early nineties. But, like cowabunga, it was a fart in the wind. Maybe, in a few decades YOLO will be like high waisted jeans and make a comeback?

Ideas and trends spread through innovators and cavalier mavericks who take hold of something and share it with the world. Then early adopters weigh in, paving the way for the masses to climb on board. The masses are what make something go from alternative or counter-culture, to mainstream, and they’re the reason we have fashion and trends. Finally, the trend drops off when the laggards come on board. They’re the very late adopters, usually old folk, and they’re the death knell to something being cool. Close your eyes and remember the first time your mum said YOLO. It was probably the last time you said it. 

So, there Jono and I were, looking at the word YOLO painted over the rainbow. My knee-jerk reaction as a writer was to be offended by YOLO. I wanted better. I wanted poetry in motion. I thought to myself, ‘If people are going to lose their shit over this, it needs to be worth losing their shit over’. Of all the words to choose, they chose “YOLO”.

Jono, however, smirked in a satisfied way, and said, ‘I like how they’ve gone over as many colours of the rainbow as they can which will make it harder for people to fix.’ The artist in him was looking at the big picture. He was changing the frame.

Street art is not hermetically sealed. It’s communal. It’s a changing landscape and a changing story. We can feel nostalgic for what came before it, and we can be sad when things feel like they’ve been ruined. But reframe. Ondaatje explains, ‘We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.’ And I for one am bloody grateful for that, because panpipes suck, and apparently you only live once. And everything changes, even art.