Top Billing attends the 2019 Cape Town Art Fair

Top Billing attends the 2019 Cape Town Art Fair

They call it the Cape Town Art Fair, but this festival of African creativity speaks for all artists on our great continent. Case in point – Zimbabwean painter Richard Mudariki and Congolese artist Patrick Bongoy took the fair by storm with their incredible work.

 
The Investec Cape Town Art Fair has grown into the largest fair of its kind on the continent, where a fast-growing African art market and international collectors and galleries can meet.

Under one umbrella, the art fair promotes organisations who nurture young artists in rural or under-privileged areas; it discovers and support new voices who will be masters in a year or two, and displays their work next to that of famous names from across the globe.

Established local artists also get a chance to display their work, and this year’s talent was some of the best.

With his trademark bright colour and sense of theatrics, painter Richard Mudariki is known for taking classic works by the Old Masters of European art and reimagining them with his own cast of human and animal characters. A comment on politics and daily life, his paintings are smart, funny opinion pieces – in images rather than words.

Richard understands that if art is to get its message across, it helps if the work entertains people. Popular with a wide range of art buyers, Richard’s paintings fetch extraordinary prices too, and he jokes that he once sold a painting in Zimbabwe for 487 million Zimbabwean dollars, as a result of severe hyper inflation.

Being such a hub of art and design, Cape Town has been the ideal platform for Richard to reach buyers from around the world, while staying rooted in Africa.

Another talent that shon at the fair is Patrick Bongoy, a highly respected Congolese artist. Patrick is known for using a painstaking, layering technique on his pieces, to reflect the hard work which women in the DRC must do to make ends meet.

Using inner tubes from vehicle tyres, industrial packaging and textiles, Patrick repurposes and reinterprets what others throw away. His work speaks to a number of human stories and struggles, and art lovers are better off for having come across his work.

If you’ve got a bare wall or an open space in search of inspiration, colour and imagination without end – there’s a world of African art waiting for you.

Photos: Courtesy of the artist, Michele Limberis (photographer)and Zeitz Mocaa 

Print Friendly