SA crafts and the reinvention of tradition

While the "high art" scene in South Africa continues to burgeon, the market for crafts has expanded to include every possible form of traditional artwork - and then some.

There is a host of new work in traditional media on the market in many places. Artists are constantly developing the repertoire of African crafts. These range from pretty tableware to decorations for Christmas trees; embroidered cloth to hang on your wall or cover your bed ... and on to the simplest of items such as key-rings and candle-holders.

With unparalleled inventiveness, South African craftmakers have adapted every possible medium and material to the demands of a marketplace that feeds both domestic buyers and tourists.

Shops, markets and artmaking collectives dealing in African craft are thriving, providing much-needed employment and income in communities such as Fugitive's Drift (near Rorke's Drift, in KwaZulu-Natal), which offers a huge variety of basketry, or the Schmidtsdrift (near Kimberley in the Northern Cape) community of displaced Bushman or San people, who are involved in art projects that produce paintings that constitute an imaginative and highly coloured extension of ancient rock art.

Folk art, high art

At the same time, the status of the traditionally anonymous maker of craft works is changing, and artists working in traditional media have emerged as notable figures in their own right with personal styles that identify them as "artists" in the sense we have come to understand the term. "Folk art" has made inroads into "high art" as Western-style assumptions about what constitutes art have been modified by broader conceptions of artmaking.

The work of ceramicist Bonnie Ntshalintshali, with its incredible, almost phantasmagoric detail, has gone well beyond the confines of traditional African pottery - yet her exquisite works could conceivably still be used at your table.

The sculptor Phutuma Seoka is another example of an artist who has taken a traditional form and given it a highly personal twist. In his case, the carving of figures using the inherent curves and forks of tree branches, common in the Venda region, is used to creating a cast of eccentric characters.

Some artists in the "folk art" mode have come up with ideas quite out of left field - like the late Chickenman Mkize, who made (now highly valued) mock roadsigns out of cheap materials, emblazoning them with eccentric messages. The fact that he was illiterate, and was transcribing words written out by others, without noting the spaces between the words, adds to the charm of the works. One of them may declare "NODRUNK ENBUMS" or ask, poignantly and pertinently, "BUTISI TART?"

The Ndebele tradition of house-painting, part of the widespread African practice of painting or decorating the exterior of homes, burgeoned amazingly with the advent of commercial paints.

It also gave rise to artists such as Esther Mahlangu, who has put her adaptations of the distinctive, highly coloured geometric Ndebele designs on everything from cars to aeroplanes.

By way of an enlightening contrast, as well as a pure visual feast, there are many Ndebele villages to be visited in the Northern Province and Mpumalanga (and the distinctive Ndebele style has been extended beautifully to beadwork).