|
The Ellis Park precinct is one step closer to the World Cup, with evocative art work and beautiful parks filling the once derelict space.
BE prepared to reach inside yourself and rediscover your child with one of the city's latest public artworks. This is certainly what artist Doung Anwar Jahangeer intended with the wonderful new sculpture unveiled last week at Ellis Park.
The mayoral committee member for development planning and urban management, Ros Greeff, art consultant Lesley Perkes, and artist Doung Anwar Jahangeer with Mika
Entitled Invented Mythologies, Jahangeer says he was asked to submit a proposal, along with four other artists, on the day his son, Mika, was born. He dedicates the sculpture to Mika.
The huge artwork, done in stainless steel, depicts a boy flying a kite, standing atop a large broken sphere. The long string of the kite stretches for metres into the air, giving the work a flighty, dream-like quality, while the tail contains bird-like shapes. It is meant to evoke in the viewer "a childlike fascination".
"I am very proud in particular to be unveiling this latest work in the City's public art programme," said the chief executive of the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA), Lael Bethlehem.
Bethlehem and the mayoral committee member for development planning and urban management, Ros Greeff, unveiled a plaque at the Bertrams Cricket Oval, in the Ellis Park precinct, the first for the inner city, on Friday, 4 September.
The Greater Ellis Park precinct has undergone a major revamp, and Invented Mythologies has been placed in the centre of Ellis Park Central Square, immediately outside the Johannesburg Stadium. The square, previously an unkempt traffic circle, now boasts landscaped gardens, a row of concrete columns, and a trickling stream of water running down a granite waterway, symbolic of the place where the Ellis Park spring is, the beginnings of the Jukskei River, which eventually becomes the mighty Limpopo River.
The cricket oval rises from a previously untidy soccer field called the Maurice Freeman Park. It now boasts tall stadium lights, a clubhouse, ablution facilities and change rooms. It will be managed by the Johannesburg Cricket Club, which dates back 16 years to a team begun in Chatsworth in Durban.
The revamped Bertrams Cricket Club
The chairman of the cricket club, Indarin Govender, is hopeful that soon the oval will host the first cricket school league, and in three years' time the teams will play premier league cricket.
Across the road the JDA has also overseen the transformation of Fuller Park. It now offers the children in the surrounding suburbs new swings, a five-a-side soccer field, basketball courts, a chessboard, and refurbished play equipment.
And several blocks away the run-down Bertrams Park in Ascot Road has been transformed into a delightful green space for the suburb's children, with a miniature basketball court, a five-a-side soccer field, swings and slides, and toilets. Colourful and appropriate graffiti finishes the walls.
"The Cinderella of the Greater Ellis Park has really come to the ball," smiled Bethlehem.
Architect
Jahangeer, a Mauritian by birth and an architect by profession, found that his training as an architect made him acutely aware of space.
"The conceptualisation of Invented Mythologies is rooted in the notion of Genius-Loci or Spirit of Place as a philosophical driving force. My inspiration is therefore derived from the natural phenomenon of everyday life, which invites the untold tales to surface," he says of the piece.
That natural phenomenon was a pair of dragonflies. "As I paced the site, summoning the spirit, two dragonflies caught my attention. They hovered over the ‘warm water' of the Jukskei, occasionally dipping into it, creating circular ripples..."
Jahangeer says of his work: "It represents the realm of creative and imaginative possibility within us that is often quelled in the humdrum of adult existence. It presents transformation/metamorphosis as not only wondrous but as necessary for survival as dreams are. It invites the viewer to look up, to look beyond to a new beginning ... of now."
The mosaic artwork commemorating the 1922 Battle of Ellis Park
The sculpture was transported by abnormal load from Durban, where the artist lives, on 20 August. Several cranes put the work in place on 21 August.
The other four artists approached by the City were Norman Catherine, Usha Seejarim, Nandipha Mtambo and Shepherd Ndudzo, from Botswana.
Ndudzo recently produced a 6,5m stone and wood sculpture for Jewel City, unveiled in November last year. Seejarim was commissioned to do a series of 10 sculptures for tall columns in Kliptown Square.
The creation
Artists were required to consider the history and heritage of the site, in particular four events: the Battle of Ellis Park, on 11 March 1922 during the 1922 Rand Miner's Revolt; a bomb that exploded at the gates to the Ellis Park Rugby Stadium in 1988, killing two people; the 1995 Rugby World Cup Final, which South Africa won; and the tragedy in 2001 in which a football fan stampede left 43 people dead.
"The invented mythology celebrates two well-known characters in South African story-telling fiction: Master Harold - from Athold Fugard's Master Harold and the Boys and Zandile from Gcina Mhlope's Have you seen Zandile," says Jahangeer.
While Master Harold was teaching the wind to fly, Zandile was going down to the river to fetch water. Zandile witnessed the wind learning to fly, and rushed to the water to tell it the story. But before she could finish her story, the water became so excited that it grew wings and started to fly, and rain was born.
Jahangeer created City Walk, taking people on walks through Durban, engaging with the street culture and people, exploring an undocumented element of the city. The walk is also done in London, Belo Horizonte in Brazil, Malmo in Sweden, and Johannesburg.
In 2004, he started the Streetlights initiative, a collaboration with a community of street children of Joburg, in the form of creative interventions in strategic public spaces in the inner city.
The revamped Erin Road cottages of The Wedge
He has also collaborated and participated in exhibitions and installations with artists both locally and abroad.
Unlike conventional architecture, where the focus is on walls that divide, his focus is on the "space between that unites". He has found, through the "platform of contemporary art, a space where he can explore his personal philosophy of an ‘architecture without walls'".
Jahangeer says that the sculpture "perfectly fulfils his vision of the work". He adds that what was particularly challenging about creating it was "making sure that the integrity of the concept remains true to itself through the fabrication and engineering process".
The metal artwork will be guarded 24 hours a day, like other major metal works around the city - the bronze Brenda Fassie sculpture in Newtown and the new Kippie Moeketsi artwork outside Kippies. This is a common practice around the world for valuable pieces, says art consultant Lesley Perkes.
The JDA has spent R1-million on the artwork, and R63-million on the Central Square upgrade. In all some R280-million has been spent on the Greater Ellis Park precinct, including upgrading the parks.
The Wedge
Also part of the revamp of the precinct is The Wedge. An area of 17 houses in Erin Street has been given an external facelift, plus the installation of water meters and electricity. Four houses backing on to Bertrams Road were demolished to make way for the Rea Vaya bus route running down the road.
The houses date to between 1910 and 1914, and are of historical value to the area.
The wall of the last house on Bertrams Road has been given an evocative mosaic mural, depicting a scene from the Battle of Ellis Park on 11 March 1922, sparked by the 1922 Miners' Strike.
Andrew Lindsay designed the mural, and 10 women who suffered in the xenophobia strikes of 2008, did the mosaic. Lindsay says they found it a healing experience to be part of something creative.
A window was added after the mural had been designed, but Lindsay incorporated it into the mural, creating flames coming out of the window.
The Ellis Park precinct is now one step further in readiness for the 2010 FIFA World Cup™.
Related stories:
|
