Photo by by David Goldblatt

South African gallerist Michael Stevenson

Courtesy Michael Stevenson

A three dimensional rendering of the new Michael Stevenson gallery in Cape Town

Roger Ballen Marlene Dumas William Kentridge Jenny Holzer Zwelethu Mthethwa Kendall Geers Kagiso Patrick Mautloa Sam Nhlengethwa

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Changing of the Guard
Linda Givon, the founder of Johannesburg’s Goodman Gallery, is a formidable presence on the South African art scene. Over a period of four decades her gallery has become the country’s premier contemporary art venue, representing artists such as William Kentridge, photographer David Goldblatt, mixed-media artist Moshekwa Langa, and painter Penny Siopis. In the past month, rumors have circulated suggesting that Givon is considering selling a 50 percent stake in her gallery to an up-and-coming independent dealer, Liza Essers.

“We are still negotiating,” said an unusually demure Givon in an interview with ARTINFO. “It is not easy to have tough fiery women work together.”

New names on the scene
A relatively unknown figure in South Africa’s small contemporary art scene, Essers may lack the visibility a brick-and-mortar address affords, but this has not prevented her from pulling off some minor coups. Early last year she hosted a commercial exhibition at a venue in London’s Cork Street. Trading as Liza Nicole Fine Art, the 30-something Johannesburg dealer showcased work by Kentridge, collage artist Sam Nhlengethwa, and painters Pat Mautloa and Claire Gavronsky.

Her present negotiations with Givon aside, Essers is also overseeing a retrospective of the mid-century modernist sculptor Eduardo Villa. Titled “Changing Worlds,” the exhibition is on view at the Nirox Foundation, a private sculpture park north of Johannesburg. Essers, an advisor to Nirox’s press-averse founder (in a previous life as a venture capitalist he was embroiled in a very public financial debacle), collector Benji Liebman, declined an interview on her plans to buy a stake in the Goodman.

Battle for artist loyalties
The proposed sale of the Goodman has taken many in the market by surprise, not least of all the gallery’s artists. An informed insider told ARTINFO that some Goodman artists even held an informal private meeting shortly after rumors of a possible “deal” between Givon and Essers started circulating at the Joburg Art Fair, in mid-March. Their anxieties might be explained by the opposing styles of the two dealers: though a hardnosed businessperson, Givon is known for her playful personality and generous patronage of the arts; Essers, by contrast, is seen to represent an aggressively mercantile agenda and a somewhat expedient business approach that caters to corporate interests.

The situation around the Goodman cues a related issue: the fierce rivalries among dealers for the allegiance of key South African artists. Goodman artists Goldblatt and Siopis are currently being tussled over by Givon and a rival Cape Town dealer, Michael Stevenson. Two years ago photographers Roger Ballen and Zwelethu Mthethwa, who is represented by New York dealer Jack Shainman, left the Goodman for nearby Everard Read Gallery; however, neither loss seems to have cost Givon much. Although Mthethwa has presented two sell-out shows with his new dealer, his expressionist pastel drawings are workaday pieces passed over by his international representatives, not an incidental fact given Goodman’s strong focus on Art Basel; meanwhile, Ballen’s single show at the Everard Read to date was a resounding commercial failure.

Founded in 1913, the Everard Read, which is jointly hosting the Villa retrospective at Nirox with Essers, has in recent years tried to shake off its stuffy, Anglophile reputation, with mixed results. Since investment banker Paul Harris, owner of Cape Town’s up-market boutique hotel Ellerman House, acquired a small minority stake in the gallery two years ago, rumors have circulated about a new contemporary offshoot.

This would be the Everard Read’s second attempt to enter the contemporary market; in the early 1990s, its first go-round, Everard Read Contemporary, failed to grab a foothold despite introducing controversial neo-Conceptualist Kendell Geers and influential sculptor Willem Boshoff. Geers, who lives in Belgium, is now represented in South Africa by the Goodman.

Johannesburg versus Cape Town
Along with the Goodman, Everard Read is the only South African gallery with representation in the country’s two major cities. Givon, who briefly opened a satellite branch in Cape Town in the mid-1970s, returned to the city in March last year. Situated in the up-and-coming neighborhood of Woodstock, Goodman Gallery Cape is managed by director Emma Bedford, formerly a curator at the country’s flagship art institution, Iziko South African National Gallery (ISANG) in Cape Town.

“Our artists begged us to open a branch in Cape Town because there was so little space for them there,” said Givon in an interview published last year in the Sunday Times, the country’s largest-circulation weekend paper. “In Johannesburg, there are lots of professional galleries … Cape Town has a lot of galleries, but they only really have Michael Stevenson, who is truly professional, with an international status.”

Unsurprisingly, Givon’s remarks caused a minor storm. They also prompted rivals to assert themselves more forcefully in the marketplace. Stevenson, who launched his contemporary gallery in the trendy De Waterkant district in 2003, will re-launch his operations on May 15 from a new ground-floor unit in Fairweather House, a previously abandoned factory space in Woodstock currently home to the Goodman Cape. “The new gallery will be one of the biggest commercial exhibition spaces in Africa,” Stevenson said of his new Woodstock space. “It’s a grown-up version of the current gallery.”

Unlike the Goodman space, Stevenson’s new venue will have street frontage. Also moving into the Fairweather House is Cape Town’s Bell-Roberts Gallery. The new venue will allow directors Suzette and Brendon Bell-Roberts, who have launched the careers of numerous young artists, to consolidate their activities. In recent years the gallery, which also runs a small publishing arm, has lost sculptor Brett Murray and mixed-media artist Doreen Southwood to Goodman and Stevenson, respectively.

New director for the National Gallery?
Quakes and shifts in the commercial gallery scene aside, Cape Town’s notoriously parochial art community has also been preoccupied with who will replace prominent local art administrator Marilyn Martin when she retires.

Officially, Martin is director of art collections at Iziko Museums of Cape Town, an administrative body overseeing the city’s various museums and collections; colloquially she is referred to as director of ISANG, where she is based. A public servant, Martin is required to step down from office on her 65th birthday, in June.

A former model and journalist, Martin, who holds a master’s degree in architecture, has occupied the director’s office at ISANG since 1990. During this time she has contributed to numerous publications, including The Short Century (2001), as well as co-ordinated a number of pivotal exhibitions, mostly recently “Picasso and Africa” (2006) and “Intimate Relations” (2007), a survey of Marlene Dumas’s paintings. Amid speculation about who her successor might be, the only salient fact to emerge is this: Martin’s position has yet to be publicly advertised.