GIF 2

GIF 2
Edited by Mark Attwood, Joachim Schönfeldt and Robert Weinek.  Johannesburg: The Artists' Press in collaboration with FIG Gallery, 1994
Edition 40/101
Smithsonian Libraries

GIF 2 is a book of mounted prints bound in brown paper covers.  It is enclosed in a wood slipcase with two bronze hooves, one attached to each side. [1]

An open invitation to participate in GIF 2 meant that any artist who wanted to submit an edition of 101 prints would be included.  Thus, the resulting artists’ book is a mélange of techniques and subject matter.  The prints include laser printing, lithography, offset printing, photocopying, relief printing, collograph printing, screen printing, photography, and mixed media.  At The Artists’ Press, Mark Attwood printed the book on his Mailander offset proof press and tipped in each print.  He collaborated directly with only one of the artists, Tamar Mason.  Attwood is not himself an artist, but his mastery of the skills of printing is essential to the final artwork.

The seventeen participating artists are Lauryn Arnott, Wayne Cahill Barker, Kim Berman, Elza Botha, Lisa Brice, Kendell Geers, Theresa-Anne Mackintosh, Martha Madiba, Tshidi Malesa, Tamar Mason, Kagiso Pat Mautloa, David Mothabeng Phoshoko, Ranko Pudi, Jo Ractliffe, Durant Sihlali, Helena Wessels, and Sue Williamson.  The wood slipcase was fabricated by Michael Zeffertt; the bronze hooves were cast by Guy du Toit.

Razor Blades and Headlight Helmets

Not surprisingly, the subject matter of the prints is as varied as the techniques.  Lisa Brice’s color laser print Woman is razor-sharp, literally, as it depicts an exploited sex worker like the ones she saw in Thailand.  Appalled by one Thai bar sign that read “pussy pulls razor blades,” Brice creates this shudder-inducing image.

In contrast, Kagiso Pat Mautloa’s collograph is a very warm earth-colored textured abstract work, while a naturalistic rendering of two South African miners wearing headlight helmets is what Durant Sihlali chose to illustrate in his offset lithograph.

Helena Wessels’s woodcut and monoprint titled Bandage is enigmatic.  Overlaying a blank map of Africa is a therianthropic figure (part human, part animal) in black with human torso and legs and the head of a beast.

Martha Madiba, Tshidi Malesa, David Phoshoko, and Ranko Pudi each contributed playing card-size linocuts mounted on a single page.  These black-and-white prints are simple decorative pictures of people.

GIF and FIG

GIF 2 is a spontaneous collaboration between Wayne Barker and Robert Weinek of the FIG Gallery and Attwood at The Artists’ Press, both in Johannesburg.  FIG Gallery was an experimental, subversive artists’ collective, started by Barker and others in a tough neighborhood in Johannesburg in 1989.  It was clearly something new on the Johannesburg art scene: installations, performance art, happenings as well as innovative art at the gallery and off-site.[2]

The word GIF (FIG spelled backwards) has a more ominous meaning: GIF is Afrikaans for ‘poison.’  The first book GIF 1 was created in 1992; a GIF 3 book is in the works.  The GIF projects fit in well with the collective spirit of FIG.

The Artists’ Press

The Artists’ Press was founded in 1991 by Mark Attwood in Johannesburg, and in 2003 re-located to a rural setting near White River, Mpumalanga.  Attwood is a master printer, whose father was a printer at Broederstroom Press.  After apprenticing there, Attwood studied at The Tamarind Institute, University of New Mexico.

Attwood has worked with many established artists, such as Deborah Bell, Robert Hodgins, William Kentridge, David Koloane, Ezrom Legae, and Sam Nhlengethwa.  The Artists’ Press also works with unknown practitioners, which is in line with its aim of “introducing people to printmaking and of assisting those who are on the fringe of the contemporary art scene in South Africa.” [3]

Bibliography

The Artists’ Press website:  http://www.artprintsa.com/.

Buitendach, Sarah.   “Pressing a Point,” photographs by David Ross.  House and Leisure (Cape Town) no. 170 (July 2008): pages 45-47.

Smith, Kathryn.   “Word Games: Experimental, Avant-garde, Conceptual, Contemporary.” In: Visual Century: South African Art in Context, volume 4, chapter 5, pages 122-151.  Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2011.