JUNE/JULY 2010
iArt Gallery Wembley: A Project Room for Contemporary Art
In his new body of work, Khayelitsha-based artist Gerald Tabata has taken inspiration from the soccer hype that has hit the country in anticipation of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Although soccer is staple entertainment in South African communities, the feeling of excitement around the game has dramatically increased in light of the country taking centre-stage as host of the biggest sporting event in the world.
However, Tabata’s concern is not with the high profile players that will be infiltrating the country, superstars welcomed with the deafening sound of vuvuzelas to our world-class stadia. For Tabata, the players that are most interesting are those who make ends meet with makeshift soccer balls on dusty pitches in townships around Cape Town. Working in a sophisticated, painterly technique and thoughtful in his use of colour, Tabata is concerned primarily with evoking the mood and atmosphere of the scenes that he depicts, which have always been inextricably bound to South African township culture, even before the advent of the World Cup.
Although Tabata is well-known for utilising his talent as an instrument to call attention to social issues (of which the most pressing in Khayelitsha currently are high levels of unemployment, poverty, poor housing and crime) his work is not the visual agitprop that usually follows such a declaration. Rather, Tabata paints people who continue to live, work and, indeed, play in the face of social and economic adversity.
“An artist, from the early stages of his painting to the final touches of his paintings, should be guided by the beauty of his work. When I was a young boy I always wanted to be an artist and I wanted to be honest to myself and paint what I like. I wanted to capture the memories of idiski ekasi (township).”
- Gerald Tabata, 2010