Essays on the artist’s work

1990 Catalogue Essay

Read essay V I B G Y O R by Dr Kit Messham-Muir

“Sun Shinning—Blood Everywhere”

Introduction, by Andrew Flatau

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The provocative Victor Gordon: art on the edge

As Steven Dubin has so passionately and eloquently expressed in his Foreword, Victor Gordon—the artist whose political awakening during the traumatic period of South African apartheid was sustained through a powerful series of anti-apartheid art projects in exile/refuge in Australia—is an inveterate slayer of ideological dragons and a deeply committed, uncompromising and provocative advocate for individual freedoms and political justice, whose hard-edged art relentlessly challenges the viewer to engage.¹

Dubin refers to the second coming of Gordon’s reputation in South Africa, which is encapsulated in the repatriation, by the Ifu Lethu (‘Our Heritage’) Foundation, of some of his most potent political works. Although Gordon is little known in his adopted homeland, it is wonderful that the message and import of these works is being disseminated and publicly displayed throughout the world, courtesy of an international touring exhibition, curated by Carol Brown, of works drawn from the Ifu Lethu Foundation.²

As curator of the Orange Regional Gallery’s survey exhibition of Victor Gordon’s art, however, I have mixed feelings about all this. On one hand I rejoice in Victor’s deserved international acclaim, but on the other hand I only wish we could present all his works here.

Although we have been able to put together a significant number of important works for our survey, to alleviate our loss of touring works, as well as those held in public collections overseas, such as The Essential Arch Bull (1994; see plate 4)—which is held in the art collection of the Constitutional Court of South Africa—we have included in this publication as many images of these works as we can.

Gordon settled in Australia in 1987 and, as Dubin has pointed out, chose exile over a mandatory second tour of duty in the South African armed forces. It is important to know, however, that another principal reason for his emigration was that the sort of art he wanted to produce, art that exposed the violent and iniquitous machinations of the apartheid system, during the so-called Unrest, was regarded by the State as sedition and had been forbidden under Emergency Regulations. Therefore, he could not remain in South Africa and be the artist he needed to be.

Australia served Gordon well. In spite of having to drive taxis to survive, within three years of his arrival he was in a position to mount a powerful exhibition of his anti-apartheid art. When he could not find a mainstream commercial gallery to host the show, he wandered into the Waterside Workers Union Hall in Sydney and presented Union officials with his proposal for a show, which featured a full-scale stage set of a fascist political meeting. The officials discussed the proposal and, having appreciated Gordon’s uncompromisingly satirical approach, accepted it with a proviso: the Union would give the artist the liberty of its hall, but unfortunately it could not pay him to curate the exhibition. Bless them!

Behold the Lands where Satan reigns (1990; see plate 5) was duly installed, complete with stage lighting as well as Mnr Die Ware Jacob (1986–1990; see plate 180), an elaborate assemblage which is now touring with the Ifa Lethu exhibition. It encloses a central painting of an evil-looking apparatchik, which is flanked by red panels, each featuring the provocative trinacriform, black-on-white, swastika-like insignia of the ultra-right Afrikaner Resistance Movement.

Between 1987 and 1994, the year in which democratic elections were held in South Africa, heralding the end of the State-sponsored apartheid system, Gordon operated as a member of the Struggle in exile. Fresh in his mind was all the political subterfuge and violence that had been everywhere about him during his period as a liaison officer between students and security personnel in the administration of the University of the Witwatersrand. In Australia, between 1987 and 1990, Gordon realised he had a great opportunity to expose the mechanisms of power in the system of apartheid through an examination of its very edges and interstices.

As the activist artist, Leon Golub has put it: in order to “figure out aspects of power, you have to look at power at the peripheries”,³ for it is at the extreme manifestations of a system of power that its contradictions and hypocrisies become most apparent. This insight is fundamental to an understanding of all Gordon’s art. Not only does he represent issues in their extreme or polarised forms, he also takes his paint right to the edge. Thus the edges, borders and frames of his paintings are often as important as what is going on in the middle. …

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BEHOLD THE LANDS WHERE SATAN REIGNS – Anti-Apartheid artwork by Victor Gordon

by Dr Michael Goldberg

The social relevance of one’s life and work must surely be of great significance to those concerned about the relationship between themselves and the communities of which they are part. For those who work or have worked in the shadow of a repressive and totalitarian government this relationship is particularly sensitive, for it takes place within a climate of brutality which pervades every aspect of life.

The work produced by the politically aware South African artist must be understood within a specific social context, for the climate of the artist’s environment under the system of Apartheid is the system of institutionalized violence. Whether this violence is directed personally against oneself or not, one still has to live inextricably enmeshed in it.

The exiled Breyten Breytenbach said: “The artists who close their eyes to the everyday injustice and inhumanity – their work will become barren. When one prefers not to see certain things. When one chooses not to hear certain voices. When one’s tongue is used only to justify this choice, then the things one turned away from do not cease to exist, the voices do not stop shouting- but one’s eyes become walled, one’s ear’s less sensitive, therefore deaf…”.

However, for those who have chosen not to remain distant, the responsibilities are clear- to arouse and stimulate a search for understanding and to emphasize the need for social responsibility. It means that they are ultimately commissioned by the community. When they hold a light up to the injustices and inhumanities they do so not for themselves alone, but for those others as well-for those who are discovering what sort of world they are living in, where they come from and where they are going.

The work of Victor Gordon fulfils these responsibilities. His images reflect both intellectually and emotionally the legacies of Apartheid. They encourage us to try and understand the nature of the players in the grim stage of a country divided by prejudice.

It is important to note that the work be seen in the context of Australian society as well, for in the words of Mongane Wally Serote: “History tells us that apartheid is the condition of the majority of the people in this world-it exist within all civilized centres”.

The work of concerned and committed artists contributes to a history that will come to reflect the courage, determination and resoluteness which exists in all those who seek, cherish and fight for freedom, whether it is from the shackles of oppression or from the constraints of ignorance.

Michael Goldberg June 1990

2003 Catalogue Essay

V I B G Y O R

by Dr Kit Messham-Muir

The Sydney art scene in the early 1990s was no place for anyone with a low tolerance for bullshit. As an art student during that time, I quickly discovered many things about the Sydney contemporary art scene that I had not expected to learn. I learned that art itself was one the very minor concerns of this scene. I learned that many of its players made up in rapaciousness what they lacked in talent and critical capacity. It seemed that the best way for ’emerging artists’ to get ahead was to join the fawning acolytes of moderately successful ‘mid-career’ artists; maybe after a few years, the most sycophantic might be rewarded with a place in a commercial gallery’s stable. Behind a flimsy façade of intellectualism, real criticality was well and truly “garrotted by political power cables” of a system of cliques and cronyism. ¹ The names of philosophers and theorists became like fashion labels,² and words like ‘rigour’ had a sadly ironic rhetoric about them. In the midst of this scene, Victor Gordon was producing serious political statements in his art: comment-aries about the violence of Apartheid, about the trivialising and commodification of art and about the politics of sex and sexuality. His work, complex and serious, was entirely off the wall at a time when it was untenably uncool to be cut too deep by anything.

I met Gordon around that time, while I was a student in the painting department of Sydney College of the Arts. Gordon worked as a casual life-drawing teacher and a part-time taxi driver to support his artistic practice. As both an artist and a  teacher, he was an idiosyncratic traditionalist. Other teachers sought to prepare students for the big bad Sydney art scene by stressing the importance of social networking and building up a CV. Meanwhile, Gordon emphasised what seemed like quaintly eccentric ideas, such as technical competence. He taught about the nuances of line, tone and colour. At the beginning of one lesson about complementary colours, he scrawled the letters ‘VIBGYOR’ on the studio wall, which is
the mnemonic for the colours of the spectrum, from V for ‘violet’ through to R for ‘red.’ I arrived late for the class on that particular morning and consequently, for years after, I thought that ‘VIBGYOR’ was actually Afrikaans for ‘Victor’. Along with emphasising technical skills, Gordon  attempted to instil in us a sense of sincerity towards our own art practice. He believed that it was better to say nothing than to say something we do not mean wholeheartedly. This is very much Gordon’s modus operandi throughout his own art production; his work is political and his politics are earnest.

The depth of Gordon’s political beliefs is anchored to a central principle: at all levels, the political inevitably resonates with the personal, and vice versa. As an émigré South African, Gordon was closely involved with the struggle against Apartheid. The works mostly engaged with capital-‘P’ politics are his anti-Apartheid paintings and installations, yet these are richly suffused with personal meaning. For example, the zebra-skin side panels of his painting, Boer Weapons, 1988 – 1990, carry four objects: a sword and handcuffs on the left panel and a whip and bible on the right. As well as iconic symbols of control, these objects have personal significance for Gordon; the bible, for example, is actually his strict-Methodist mother’s bible. So, he contends with the theme of control and coercion on both personal and societal levels. Similarly, the rubber bullet inset at the apex of the frame in Mr Genuine Article, 1986 – 1990, was actually fired at Gordon during a demonstration in South Africa in the mid-1980s. When one of my fellow classmates at Sydney College made a similar anti-Apartheid work, Gordon was surprisingly disapproving. If there was nothing personal at stake for that particular student, asked Gordon, then what was the point of that student making such a political statement?

Gordon’s work at that time also takes on the politics of the Sydney art scene—more trivial in the grand scheme of things, but no less relevant to Gordon’s life and art practice. Between his more overtly political works of the early—to mid—1990s, Gordon produced a series of semi-abstract paintings of African animals. If we see these paintings in reproductions they seem his least political works. Exhibited at the Cultural Iconographies group show at Sydney’s Tin Sheds Gallery, however, absurdly-big price tags hung from these paintings. This comment on the commodification of art was pretty straightforward. His sculpture, The Essential Arch Bull, exhibited at CBD Gallery in 1994, is similarly obvious and more vitriolic. This bull-horned filing cabinet contains six drawers labelled with generic and specific art theoretical sources, like ‘French Philosophy’ and ‘Art & Text.’ In each is a copy of a book about self-promotion for artists.

The personal and political are most intimately entwined, in far more complex ways, where Gordon’s work deals with sex and sexuality. This strand of his work begins to emerge in the late 1980s and early 1990s in his ‘Taxi’ series. During this time, he was moonlighting as a taxi driver, an occupation that clearly informs these paintings. Each painting in the Taxi series is a narrative vignette, set amongst the city nightlife. ‘T599‘ shows a blonde woman stepping from a taxi wearing red high-heels and black stockings, which tells us that she is about to hit the town. Meanwhile another woman appears to point angrily at the male driver through the passenger window. A sliver of the neon sign of ‘Love Machine’, a Kings Cross strip joint, establishes this scene for us, but the full narrative remains a mystery. Gordon gives us the scene without the context. Like a taxi driver, we get only the fragments of other people’s stories that spill-over indiscreetly in the backseat of a taxi. In this regard, there is a certain voyeurism about these images, which is perhaps most patent in ‘Engaged‘, where the male driver adjusts his rear view mirror for a better look at his female passenger.

As with much of Gordon’s work, these paintings also function at a less literal level. The taxi operates throughout this series as an allegory of venality; not only of the obvious saleable sexuality of a city’s red-light district but also of the libidinal economy of the meet market. In TAXI the ‘not for hire’ sign acts as an unequivocal retort from the sabre-toothed red-clawed woman to the leering advances of the fag-smoking man on the left edge of the scene. In ‘$4.50’, more gawking male faces fix their gaze on a less threatening figure of a woman, who seems to wear the taxi’s meter as a price tag. These themes are present in ‘XXXX‘, the work from this series that is included in this exhibition. In this scene, a beer-gutted man wearing a t-shirt that reads ‘I can feel a XXXX coming on’ leers at a woman in a little black dress. Sexuality, capitalism and Australian class mores resonate through that iconic XXXX.