Breaking Ground

March saw the debut of the Joburg Art Fair, running from the 13th through the 16th in Johannesburg, South Africa. The event—the first of its kind on the continent—gathered 22 galleries from Africa, Europe and North America, showing work by contemporary, predominantly African, artists. Ross Douglas, director of Artlogic, the communications company behind the fair, estimated the total take at just under $4 million, a modest amount by larger-fair standards but still something of a coup for the contemporary African art market.

At the booth of the South African gallerist Michael Stevenson, Pieter Hugo’s 2007 “Hyena Men” photographs, one of which is pictured to the left, sold briskly at prices that ranged from $9,600 to $14,200. Stevenson—with fellow South African dealers Johans Borman and Michael Graham-Stewart—also presented painter Gerald Sekoto’s definitive Self-Portrait, 1947, which went to a South African collector for an undisclosed amount. (Although the fair’s focus was contemporary art, a notable number of modern works were on offer as well.) Sales at New York’s Jack Shainman Gallery included four editions of Claudette Schreuders’s bronze sculpture Eclipse, 2008, for $50,000 each, and Zwelethu Mthethwa’s photograph Untitled (from Mozambique series), 2006, for $14,000. Johannesburg’s Goodman Gallery sold William Kentridge’s editioned tapestry Nose Series: Mare Aegyt, 2007, for $55,000, and Marlene Dumas’s watercolor The Blonde, 1993, for a reported $140,000—both to South African collectors.

Douglas is confident that, given the inaugural editon’s success, a more international audience will be in attendance next year.

"Breaking Ground" originally appeared in the May 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's May 2008 Table of Contents.