Southern Guild Showcase at Everard Read

The Southern Guild, spearheaded by Trevyn and Julian McGowan of Source, joins forces with premier steel producer Arcelor Mittal SA to stage the largest showcase of high-end contemporary design ever held in this country. The six-week long exhibition will open at the Everard Read Gallery in Johannesburg  on Thursday 2 August will feature work by a record number of 110 participants.

These will include some of the country’s most important design, art and architecture names such as William Kentridge, Phillemon Hlungwani, Kerri Evans, Athi Patra, Nkhensani Nkosi, Dylan Lewis, Angus Taylor, Haldane Martin, StudioMas, Silvio Rech, Egg, Gregor Jenkin, Tonic, Pierre Cronje, Nic Sithole, Conrad Botes and many others. 

The exhibition will be held throughout the Everard Read gallery and grounds and aims to expose South Africans to the body of work that received rave reviews and record sales internationally following the Southern Guild being invited to participate in Design Miami and Design Days Dubai, the leading fairs for collectable contemporary design, at the end of 2011 and in March this year, respectively. Fifty percent of the stand at Design Days Dubai was sold out by the end of the fair – which is unheard of. 

Southern Guild, founded in 2008 as a showcase for exceptional South African design, made history by becoming the only African gallery ever to be hand-picked to showcase alongside an exclusive group of only 23 of the world’s most respected design-art galleries. As a result of these fairs, which generated large sales and public and industry awareness, Southern Guild is now collaborating with New York-based galleries, Friedman Benda and R 20^th, two of the most respected design galleries in the world, and is receiving extensive coverage in the most regarded design publications around the world.

The upcoming Everard Read event will include a number of highlights. One such is a series of collaborations between well-known artists and producers to develop once-off pieces. These will range from a beautiful painting of a reclining nude by artist Kerri Evans being reworked into the ultimate statement rug by Paco, an evocative heritage piece that transfers a Phillemon Hlungwani’s landscape onto a Pierre Cronje table made of a 400-year old piece of yellow wood from the Knysna forest, and the wildly contemporary “Where we at” steel bench by graffiti artist Zabalazaa and Laurie Wiid van Heerden. A keenly awaited collaboration still under wraps is that of artist William Kentridge with acclaimed furniture designer Gregor Jenkin.

Ceramics, which is a particularly prolific category in the South African design context, will also be a key focus. Thirty-six of the country leading ceramists will be participating. These will include Astrid Dahl whose organically-shaped water features will soon grace the Thames-side garden of an international collector, as well as Michaella Janse van Vuuren, recently nominated by London-based Rabih Hage (one of the most respected gallerists pioneering the growth of design-art) as “the most interesting new talent to watch” at a major international press conference during Design Days Dubai.

The Southern Guild 2012 exhibition is again being sponsored by ArcelorMittal SA following the company’s initial involvement in 2011 in particular with the inception of the Southern Guild Foundation, the body launched to provide multi-level support for the development of a vibrant local design industry.

According to Nku Nyembezi-Heita, chief executive officer of ArcelorMittal SA, the steel maker wants to promote the use of steel across diverse products by associating with relevant projects. Two such initiatives were the commissioning of the ArcelorMittal Orbit for the 2012 London Olympics which will see the 115 metre artwork being a prominent feature of the this year’s event and later the London Skyline. The Orbit construction uses steel from all continents where ArcelorMittal has operations, including South Africa. The company’s sponsorship of Southern Guild is the second initiative in support of this aim.

The past decade has seen considerable growth in the field of contemporary limited edition art-design, as measured by the increasing number of museum exhibitions, international design art fairs and attention by major international auction houses including Christies, Phillips and Sotheby’s. Internationally, South African price points are very affordable, in comparison to the better known international design names and higher gallery mark-ups, and this combined with a fresh voice and complex narrative, results in work by Southern Guild designers increasingly catching the attention of some of the leading players in the field who believe South Africa has something very new to say.

Find out more at www.southernguild.co.za