Culture vultures in Kalk Bay

On Wednesday I not only man­aged to sneak into an art exhib­i­tion open­ing and mingle with the art afi­cion­ados of Cape Town, but I also man­aged to snatch a moment of poetry at Kalk Bay Books straight afterwards.

I didn't know the Kalk Bay Modern exis­ted, until a col­league of mine insisted on stop­ping off in Kalk Bay en route home from Fish Hoek one morn­ing, not only for the more than choice hot crossed buns at Olympia Cafe, but also to whiz through a col­lec­tion of George Hallet's pho­to­graphs on dis­play at the gal­lery, but that's another story!

The Kalk Bay Modern lies above the bottle store and stretches above the heads of those din­ing in the res­taur­ants that line this block of Kalk Bay, includ­ing the Olympia Cafe. Its address is 1^st floor Olympia Buildings, just in case, after my unec­cesar­ily detailed dir­ec­tions, you get lost.

The Kalk Bay Modern gal­lery, which is also a fram­ing shop, is not­able for its incred­ible col­lec­tion of con­tem­por­ary mod­ern art. It has beau­ti­ful views over Kalk Bay har­bour, although when you're look­ing at art on the walls, par­tic­u­larly at an open­ing, star­ing out at the views isn't high on your list of pri­or­it­ies. But non­ethe­less, know­ing the views are there def­in­itely adds to one's exper­i­ence of the gal­lery. It's also an unusu­ally shaped gal­lery — long and fairly nar­row, with win­dows down the length of the side facing onto the street

That said, the Modern gal­lery cer­tainly doesn't feel con­stric­ted, host­ing a craft shop and a col­lec­tion of an 'eclectic mix' of local South African art tal­ent along with qual­ity crafts from devel­op­ing com­munity groups. If you want to exper­i­ence South African mod­ern art, then this is obvi­ously a good place to do so. I say this because I am any­thing but an art afi­cion­ado. Art appeals to me because of some­thing I can­not begin to trace — mostly to do with bursts of primary col­our and the artist's abil­ity to aban­don pre­ten­tion, but that's a gut feel that has noth­ing to do with the com­ment­ary I heard around me on Wednesday night!

The gal­lery act­ively pro­motes local artists and design­ers. Aside from show­cas­ing the tex­tiles, ceram­ics, jew­ellery and pho­to­graphic tal­ent of the likes of Katherine Glenday, Christina Bryer, Yda Walt, Nic Bladen, Meagan Meredith, George Hallet, Amelia Smith and a host of oth­ers, they are also a win­dow for local artists and crafters who make use of recycled mater­i­als, so you'll find Heath Nash, Brett Murray, Willard Musarurwa and Wola Nani here too.

But we were there to see a col­lec­tion of the works of Peter Clarke. This par­tic­u­lar exhib­i­tion was entitled 'A hot and quiet even­ing'. Peter works mainly with wood and linocuts, two ways of print-making that are regarded as sim­ilar and have been described as meth­ods that 'enhance and com­ple­ment the sim­pli­city and hon­esty of his sub­ject matter'.

I didn't know what linocuts were, so it was a whole new exper­i­ence to learn that this is a print­mak­ing tech­nique in which one uses a sheet of lino­leum into which one cuts with a sharp knife or chisel, so that the raised or uncarved areas almost act as a mir­ror image or reversal of the parts to show prin­ted. You ink the lino­leum sheet and then impress this onto paper or fab­ric, and the res­ult is too beau­ti­ful and suits, in par­tic­u­lar, these par­tic­u­larly African style works.

Peter Clarke, I learnt, is over eighty – although you would never have said that the little man who stood to make an elo­quent speech after intro­duc­tions, was eighty! Born in Simon's Town Peter now calls Ocean View his home. I noticed that a lot of his works are tiny, but didn't think to com­ment. It was only later that I dis­covered that this is because he works from his home, which does not have its own stu­dio and that his works are small because prac­tic­ally he hasn't the room to do large-scale works. Clarke is also an inter­na­tion­ally acclaimed writer and poet and oscil­lates between the dif­fer­ent forms of expres­sion as the mood takes him.

He has illus­trated books, writ­ten poetry, short stor­ies, bound books, and, as a print­maker, has been influ­enced by the prints of the German Expressionists, Japanese wood­cuts, and the works of Mexican artists Diego Rivera and David Siqueiros. I enjoyed his art, par­tic­u­larly a beau­ti­ful flower done in blue hues. His work is appar­ently selling like hot cakes, so get to the gal­lery before the pieces are sent to their new owners.

Book shops in both Obz and Kalk Bay reg­u­larly host off the wall even­ings and we had but a block to walk up the road from the art gal­lery to the inde­pend­ent book­shop on the next corner. The atmo­sphere was a lot more sub­dued than that of the art gal­lery, and people were gath­er­ing, speak­ing in hushed tones as befits a book shop, before a mike that had been set up at a podium in the centre of the floor.

Off the wall is a reg­u­lar poetry event aimed at poetry lov­ers and writers. They're run by Hugh Hodge and it gives one the chance to listen to some of the city's best poets read their own works. We were there to listen to Simric Yarrow read from his 'Flying on the Lucid Fringe' and other works.

Simric does per­form­ance poetry, which I found at once incred­ibly over­whelm­ing and mes­mer­ising. We are so used to see­ing poetry as print on a page that we for­get that poetry for cen­tur­ies was spoken. Simric is also a musi­cian and the skill with which he per­forms his poetry is quite aston­ish­ing and beautiful.

I think, because he was per­form­ing his own work, it was incred­ibly nat­ural and almost like a second skin for him – I was blown away by the strength of his per­form­ance, but also the way he almost sang some of his lines that gave it a par­tic­u­larly unique movement.

We stayed until the break, where­after the mike is opened up to any­one want­ing to read their poems to a gen­er­ous pub­lic. We left then but not before hear­ing that the next Off the Wall even­ing will host Finuala Dowling, an author and poet who lives in Kalk Bay and whose work I have both read and enjoyed.

Contact Details:
Kalk Bay Books, Majestic Village, 124 Main Road, Kalk Bay.
Telephone: +27 (0)21 788‑2266

Kalk Bay Modern, 1^st Floor Olympia Buildings, 136 Main Road, Kalk Bay (above Olympia Cafe).
Telephone: +27 (0)21 788‑6571

Useful Links:
Kalk Bay Attractions
Things to Do in Kalk Bay
Kalk Bay Accommodation
Cape Town Accommodation