Natale Labia Museum - Current Exhibitions

Florence Zerffi in her studio
Photographed by Bryan Hesseltine

Born in the same year, these two remarkably honest and uncompromising painters devoted their long lives to art. Apart from the fact that they were close friends for many years, there are several interesting similarities in their careers and in the work they produced. Both were active participants in the New Group (Zerffi was a founder member and Prowse was chair in 1952), both were curators of the Michaelis Collection at the Old Town House, both taught art for many years. Both were excellent portraitists, and also painted landscapes and city scapes, both worked prolifically and exhibited frequently. However less is generally known of the life of Florence Zerffi as she was rather overshadowed by the huge reputation of her short-lived husband, Harry Stratford Caldecott.
This exhibition is drawn from the SANG permanent holdings as well as from private collections in and around the Peninsula.
A booklet, consisting of two biographical essays, accompanies the exhibition.

Organised by master-goldsmith Errico Cassar, who teaches jewellery design at the University of Stellenbosch, this exhibition shows how the design of this ancient art can still surprise and amaze us. Over 50 extraordinary pieces may be seen. Some designs are based on themes, which include 'the seven deadly sins' and 'design for an idol', all of which are wearable. Fifteen adventurous goldsmiths, mostly from the Cape Peninsula, use unusual methods to achieve their designs and a lot more colour than one would normally expect. They create three-dimensional forms from flat sheets of metal using the technique of pressing or repousse, or a combination of the two, rather than casting the forms as a commercial jeweller would. This gives the piece a completely different feel as it is handmade from start to finish. The works on this exhibition are therefore quite different from the norm in concept, design and manufacture. Unless you've been to funky jewellery shows abroad, you're not likely to have seen this sort of human ornament before.

Writing Workshop
Writing Yourself Creating a Life Story
Friday 23 August 14:00-16:30
Saturday and Sunday 25 August 10:00-15:30
"Time comes into it. Say it. Say it. The universe is made of stories not of atoms" Muriel Rukeyser
This course is for anyone who wants to work in personal memory and life narrative as a way of processing their story or leaving gifts for children or grandchildren.
The course explores creative ways of writing the memories that have made us who we are. We consider both inspiration and editing as we work in supportive groups. Participants don't need special talents to attend.

The Eyes of a Child: Writing for Children
Friday 30 August 14:00-16:30
Saturday 31 and Sunday 01 September 10:00-15:30
"Only when I make room for the voice of the child within me"
This course is for anyone who would like to write for or tell stories to children. We begin recollecting our own childhoods and our own reception of stories. We enter the world of the imagination. As the American poet Wallace Stevens suggests, we entertain the fantastic to understand the actual.
The course considers questions such as: Is writing for children different from writing for adults? What kind of language is appropriate? How do I work with an illustrator and a publisher? On the way we look at models of picture books and teenage texts. (Please bring along favourite books). Beginner writers are welcome.

Dorian Haarhoff, the facilitator, is a Namibian academic (English literature) and published writer with a deep interest in stories and in teaching writing. He has conducted many writing workshops (including UCT Summer Schools). The course is influenced by Jungian psychology and mythology.
Course fee: R165 (R150 for FONGS) couples R150 each.

Lectures

Quarterly History of Art Lectures
Fauvism
Wednesday 27 September 10:30-12:30
Dr Caryll Shear, chairperson of the Friends of the Friends of the SANG and a well-respected art historian, will discuss the work of Henri Matisse, André Derrain and Maurice Vlaminck, relating them to their period, which was an interesting one, not least because the name 'fauve' means 'wild beast'.
Fee: R25 (includes tea)
Bookings: tel 7884106.

Expressionism
Wednesday 27 November10:30-12:30

Decorative Arts Lecture Series

Victorian Kaleidoscope
Thursday 18,25 July
Thursday 1,8,15,22,29 August
Thursday 5 September 10:00-13:00

The course provides an intensive study of interior decoration and antiques - furniture, silver, porcelain, glass, objets d'art and painting - during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The century from 1830 to 1930 not only saw the various stylistic movements succeed each other with accelerating rapidity, it also saw them multiply into a bewildering array of richly contrasting styles.

1. ROTHSCHILD ROCOCO AND STOCKBROKER TUDOR
Victoria's reign empowered a philistine bourgeoisie. They had the 'brass' and called the tune. Cheap swank became the reigning mode and gave rise to a staggering profusion of styles. The stock modes - neo-Gothic, neo-Rococo, Renaissance and Baroque - all flourished alongside bizarre hybrids such as the 'fat classical', the 'Jacobethan', Chinoiserie, Japonaiserie and the exotic 'Islamic'.

2. BIEDERMEIER BAEDEKER
In the German-speaking countries the formal pomp of Napoleon's empire yielded to a bourgeois emphasis on cosy and charming domesticity. Biedermeier painting and furniture epitomise the heyday of Victoriana when a magnificently mustachioed pipe-smoking Pater familias firmly ruled the roost, while Mama bossed the domestics and their daughters diligently improved themselves by reading aloud or practising their scales.

3. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SAINT JAMES AND SAINT AUGUSTUS
The awesome vulgarity of the Great 1851 exhibition prompted Augustus Welby Pugin and other bearded, Victorian, old Testament sages to champion the Gothic as the style of the catholic cathedrals and hence, the style of God. The resultant Reformed Gothic movement eventually burgeoned into the High Victorian style of James Barry's many-splendoured palace of Westminster and the gorgeous, romantic fantasy of Burgess' Welsh castles.

4. THE MESSIAH OF WALTHAMSTOW
The supreme Pontiff of the Arts and Crafts, William Morris, was a fiery socialist Utopian whose oeuvre was intended to usher in the millennium. Although very much of his time, Morris' goal of the house beautiful in which architecture, decoration and objets d'art all participate in a uniform style, and strike the ideal balance between functional efficiency and aesthetic beauty, permeated the Bauhaus, and shaped many modernist ideas still alive today.

5. FREUDIAN SLIPS
Nothing could be more revelatory of the dark tortuous recesses of the Victorian psyche than the work of Hunt, Rossetti and Millais. Their stern moralism and insistent Christian symbolism assuaged the avid Victorian desire for ethical uplift and moral reassurance. However, to a modern sensibility, the hidden agendas of the subtext, hint at forbidden urges and obsessions that lend their art riveting Freudian undertones.

6. WILDE OATS AND THE NAUGHTY NINETIES
Art Nouveau - the new style for the new century - first blossomed in English textiles and book production where whiplash curves and organic inspiration created a vital new idiom without historical precedent. The Aesthetic movement of Wilde and Whistler brought the style into disrepute, and impelled a prudish Victorian society to purge it of lush curves, and dragoon it into the straight lines and ascetic shapes that betokened Moral Rearmament.

7. NANCY BOYS
In France and Belgium, Art Nouveau liberated itself from drear Anglo-Saxon puritanism, and burgeoned into the unabashedly sensual and voluptuous style of swirling floral fantasy that typified the fin de siecle. In Paris, Guimard and Gaillard gave it a chic metropolitan gloss, while in Nancy, Emile Gallé formulated a mystic botanic naturalism that found exquisite expression in furniture and glass.

8. TAKE A DECO!
After the carnage of the Great War, Art Nouveau seemed frivolous and degenerate, and designers created a powerful new geometric style of neon, chrome and glass that reflected the syncopated rhythms of jazz, and the sleek and soaring skyscrapers of Manhattan. Slowly the austere mechanised products of the International Modern School displaced the opulent hand-crafted artefacts of the elitist Parisian designers.

Lectures occur every Thursday from 10.00 to 13.00. The term lasts 8 weeks and runs from July 18 until September 5. R25 per lecture or R180 per term (including tea). Enquiries and bookings, please telephone 7884106/7.

The lecturer is Lloyd Pollak who studied at U.C.T., the Sorbonne and the Study Centre for the History of the Fine and Decorative Arts (London) where he graduated cum laude. Lloyd has lectured widely in England for NADFAS, London University, the Study Centre, the Inchbald School of Design and the City and Guilds of London Art School, besides conducting art tours to Paris. In Australia Lloyd ran many courses for both Sotheby's and the National Trust.

Readings

A tribute to Douglas Livingstone
Saturday 13 July 15:00
Tony Morphet, Ingrid de Kok, Patrick Cullinan, Catherine Glenn, Mike Nicol, Peter Wilhelm and Gus Ferguson will read their choice of Douglas Livingstone's poetry.

In celebration of National Women's Day
Saturday 10 August 15:00

Basil du Toit
Saturday 14 September 15:00

Entry free and tea is served. Booking not essential but let us know if you are coming, it helps with the catering. Tel 7884106.

Book Launch
Sunday 21 July 11:00
The launch of The False Bay Cycle, a collection of sensual poems by Sue Clark, published by Firfield Pamphlet Press will take place in the boudoir, with readings by the poet.
All welcome, a delicious tea will be served.

Forthcoming Lecture Series
Thursday 3 October
Thursday 21 November
Lectures on the old Cape colonial style.

Historical Society of Cape Town

Early Anglican Missionaries
Wednesday 10 July 10:30
Speaker: Mr William de Villiers

Topic to be announced
Wednesday 14 August 10:30
Speaker: Dr. Tim Keegan

The history of anti-semitism in South Africa
Wednesday 11 September 10:30
Speaker: Mr Milton Shane

Entry R5.00. Free to members with cards. To book tel 7884106. All welcome.

The Poetry Society
Join this society (R50 p.a., cheques payable to the S.A. National Gallery) and enjoy immediate benefits : free subscription to the quarterly Snail Press Poetry Journal, CARAPACE, (worth R50!), invitations to poetry readings, book launches and other events, advance notice of workshops, free admission to many of these events and the rewarding feeling that you are actively supporting this undervalued art form.
Tel 7884106 for further information.

Holiday concerts for children
Pedro Espi, more commonly known as Pedro the Music Man, presents four concerts characterised by stories, instruments and magic-making.

The Magic Lekolilo Bird
Saturday 17 August 10:30

Cowbells and Tortoise shells
Saturday 24 August 10:30

One Child, One Note
Saturday 31 August 10:30

The Mermaid from Zanzibar
Saturday 7 September 10:30

The place is Zanzibar, the year is 1873, and the slave trade has just been outlawed. Off the springboard of solid research, leap characters real and fantastical: the heroine is an African mermaid and her friends include singing whales and a one-octopus band, and even some young humans. When she has to fight for her freedom, her friends from land and sea unite to help her.
Being one of Pedro's shows, it follows that it is a celebration of world music, accessible to all. Instruments are fashioned out of sea-weed, shells and driftwood, and even fishing-rods and shipwrecked treasure are used to make magical sounds.
Audience participation is extensive.

Children aged 4 to 9 absolutely adore Pedro, so book early, we're always bursting at the seams when he comes to play. Entry: R7. Bookings tel. 7884106.

Concerts

The Eroica Trio
Tuesday 13 August 15:30
Eric Martens (cello) Hanlie Martens (piano) and Zanta Hofmeyer (violin) will perform Beethoven's 'ghost' trio and Schubert's Trio in b flat major, among other works.

The Stellenbosch Piano Quartet
Sunday 22 September 15:30
Louise Lansdown (viola), Alison Lansdown (cello), Amanda Goodburn (violin) and Ryan Daniel (piano) will perform works by Mozart and Brahms.

Museum Café
The Museum Cafe offers a new taste in the sensory arts. It will be under new management from August, but you can still book your table at tel. 7882130.