As VERVE expands past just an online platform into the physical world, we are trying to keep our ethos, as well as our natural curiosity, alive in the things we do.

Workshops were never something that we saw as a part of our expansion to be honest - who are we to be guiding artists when we know so little about the industry?

But as VERVE grows, the next step kind of finds us, and the people we meet along the way are the ones to take our platform further than we first envisioned.

After hosting our first music workshop a month ago in collaboration with Kila G, we were then approached by Art+Industry to put on another edition, this time focusing on the contemporary art world.

I stopped by the new gallery last week to chat to gallery owner Christopher Jannou and curator Bronwyn Davis to learn more about the new gallery space in Bo-Kaap and the intention behind the project.

Christopher Jannou, gallery owner // Image sourced from urbanafricacapital.com

What would you say is the message or catalyst behind Art+Industry?

 It has a lot to do with my own background. So I started in arts and music, I dropped out of college, trying to get a record deal. Along the way, I had to really learn entrepreneurship - as an artist you’re kind of on your own.

I started really appreciating and emphasising the idea that if the ultimate freedom is to be able to pursue your art, then you have to be commercially free. And so ‘art and industry’ was always a phrase going on in my head.

On one hand nothing is more exciting to me than design and creative endeavours,  but without the freedom to pursue them, it's just stress. There used to be a meme, and I used to believe in it too, that said you have to kind of struggle to be a good creative. But  I don't believe that anymore, especially now with all the tools that are available to us.

Back when I was in the game, it was all about gatekeepers. If you were trying to get a record deal or get an agent or get into a gallery, a gatekeeper was sort of an arbiter of taste and quality and value. They may have no qualifications to judge taste or prequalify anything, but that's the system. And now we're kind of in a space where there are no gatekeepers anymore.  There's only you and how good you are. There has been sort of a democratisation of access. So it's all about just how you cut through the noise. It's a really exciting time for artists

I never went to a business school but I'm very steeped in business - I do a lot of capital raising like, real estate developments and stuff. The things I learned to be able to succeed at are really relevant to artists.  It's all the same game.

I think it's a wonderful time to be an artist, actually, because you don't have to wait for anybody. It's like a permissionless environment.

Bronwyn Davis, Curator at Art+Industry // Image sourced from Instagram

For you as a curator, what are we trying to achieve with art+industry?

So it's a difficult navigation, the art world as it is right now, because there are parts of the art world that are accessible only to those who are being taught how to perceive art, right?

And those who are us who are “in the art world”, that's the art that we see as the most valuable. But we forget/look down on artworks and artists that are accessible to the general public

I'm really trying to navigate this very fine line, almost like this gray area, where art and design meet. I feel like that's kind of what I'm finding my challenge to be, because I'm naturally drawn to the more academic, the more conceptual, the more political side of things. But then the nature of the space and the people that I'm working with tend to focus on design.

I think it also leads to this conversation of the importance of the commercial, which is something I'm very curious to try to do with art+industry, is to get some artists in who have very strong practices or very strong developing practices and find a way to find the golden area where you can have a commercially viable practice, while maintaining your conceptual integrity.

That's what I would really love to achieve. I think a lot of galleries struggle or fail - really beautiful amazing galleries that we would want to have had to survive - They fail because they were not able to get the commercial side. And that's what I really want to try to navigate.

As someone who's not from the art world and who didn't study the arts, what I’ve always wondered is how does one put a value on art?

Yeah, so it's actually a very important conversation. I've had to reflect on that a lot recently, again, through being put into place with someone who very much values design, whereas I value the conceptual final side of things.

What do you mean by design?

Design meaning something that has aesthetic value. So, I kind of found for myself, and this is my theory, right, that there's almost three pillars of value in art.

One is the aesthetic value. Is it pleasing to the eye? Does it make sense to me immediately? How does it make the space feelas a design object, or an aesthetic object?

Then the second form of valuation is a temporal value. It's the fact that someone and spent hours and hours of time conceptualising this, ideating it, learning the skills necessary to be able to create the object to the point that they have, you know. That's also the value that is given to it immediately is the time and intention you put into the art. And then the final value is a research value. It's a practice. And in academic art, that's very big. And in conceptual art. That value comes from the fact that again, you spend all these hours focusing on creating this one thing and in that creating your thinking through concepts, you're finding a way to express a meaning, express a message to someone.

I think that’s where this tension, starts to build. The art world is big and it's complicated and a lot of parts of the art world contradict each other, and that comes from the fact that there's so many different ways of valuing what art is and what good art is.

The workshop hosted by VERVE and Art+Industry on Oct 4th

For the workshop, who doyou want to be at the workshop? Who do you want to attend?

That's true. So I want people to attend who are curious about learning how to be more commercially viable as artists, and you have desires to push our artwork forward in a direction that art is not just a luxury, but art is a necessity. That's the people I want. I would like a variety of people to attend. I want people who don't understand the art world to come. I want people who fully understand the art world and are wanting to see it in different lens to come. And I would love for industry professionals to attend as well, industry veterans who've been in the art world, collectors, curators to come through. But I think it's mainly for the younger artists, those whoare say, 18 to 25, those of us who are trying to just figure things out - this workshop is for them.

What's your opinion of the current cultural landscape and where do you from here from your personal experience?

So for a long time, white art and white culture has completely gatekept the industry, and there's been this huge subculture that has been developing. But now, in the past 10 years or so, even in the past five years, the subcultures are becoming the dominant cultures, and that's kind of causing this interesting conversation and sometimes tension between different gatekeepers and different ideas of what makes culture good, what makes art good, what makes music good, you know? And that's kind of what I'm seeing a lot of in terms of the cultural landscape changing. Like black South African culture is growing in its own way. It's making its own voice, its own culture is no longer being told, it no longer accepting being told what it is. It's now, like telling us what it is, and that's been a very powerful thing.

How would you define culture?

That's a very hard question. People literally study that. I had to research that for my Honours thesis.

I think culture is an expression of two things. Culture is an expression of self, and it's an expression of collectivity. Culture is an expression of how people see themselves. And to expand on that, people see themselves in a certain way and how they see themselves they try to express themselves - that's culture, right?

Culture is also a reflection of the society and groups that you're around, and how you define that, how you define belonging. I don't think you can talk about culture without talking about belonging.

And it's interesting that when we talk about culture, we start talking about creation. That's quite an interesting conversation, because creation then shows a sense of belonging. That to create is to belong. But also it's interesting because to create anything, creates culture, to create music, creates culture.

If no one was listening to your song, would your song be culture, right? If your song was just playing in the forest, no one was listening. Would it be culture? I guess culture, in my opinion, therefore needs to be a conversation. It can't just be a one way imposed thought.

Pop by 42 Dorp Street this Saturday and come take part in the open discussion facilitated by Bronwyn. We have a stellar panel of artists including Mercy Thokozane Minah, Dominique Cheminais, and Muofhe Manavhela.

Whether you’re a budding artist trying to figure oot how to get your work out there, or just curious as to how the industry works, there is sure to be something of value to be gleaned from the scintillating conversation.

You can also feel free to fill out the RSVP form and add some questions or thoughts of your own

Art+Industry - the new gallery on the block

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