MOTEL7 Tears and Castles

Cover: 2008, Street mural corner Mountain and Clarence Streets, Woodstock, Cape Town.

MOTEL7 - Tears and Castles Exhibition catalogue ISBN 978-0-620-43358-7Copyright © 2009 34 Long Fine Art and the artist34long.com

INDEX

MOTEL7 ON THE MOVE 2 Antoinette du Plessis

STREETS AND GENDER 5 Antoinette du Plessis BIBLIOGRAPHY 6

TEARS AND CASTLES - a gallerist’s view 8 Andries Loots

LIST OF WORKS 9-27

MOTEL7 RESUMÉ 28

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 29

MOTEL7 ON THE MOVE

Motel7 is the pseudonym of a young Irish-Norwegian artist who has been active in the graffiti and street art scene in and around Cape Town for the past five years.

Coming from an artistic family, she has always seen herself as an artist, never doubting that an artistic career would happen naturally.

When 34Long Fine Art offered her a debut solo exhibition, she seized the opportunity with enthusiasm, postponing her return trip to Europe in order to concentrate on producing a full body of work for the show.

Although this is her first solo exhibition, she is by no means new to studio work and exhibiting. She used to exhibit at The Bin, a now defunct exhibition space in Harrington Street, Cape Town, which she acknowledges as a formative influence alongside individuals like Falko and Mak1One, two of Cape Town’s graffiti pioneers. The Bin played an important, though short-lived, role as a meeting place for off-beat visual culture in the city. An underground, counter-culture, hip-hop, street-oriented initiative with wild energy directed by idealism more than business savvy, it provided an essential social context for young artists who positioned themselves outside the mainstream.

Even while devoting her time to studio work, Motel7’s passion for graffiti and street art remains undiminished. She remembers the haven of comfort it provided to her as a young teenager at odds with the restrictions of organized society. “I always experienced myself as a misfit”, she says.

She acknowledges that painting on the street and painting for gallery walls are very different activities, requiring entirely different modes of thinking about art, but she sees no reason why she should not be successful in both. She relishes the ambivalences and challenges arising from

straddling these diverse worlds. These challenges range from political issues, which she considers minor, through delicate social issues – the insecurities we all face in society – to major questions regarding career choices and self-positioning in the art world.

Her acceptance of a gallery exhibition has drawn some negative attitudes from fellow graffiti writers. These sadden her, as they seem to result from limiting and self-defeating assumptions. Why, for example, should the pursuit of commercial success make her somehow a less committed, less ‘pure’ street artist? She remains fully committed to her intention of continuing to paint in public places indefinitely and in as many locations around the world as possible.

An essential issue which all graffiti artists have to confront some time or another, is the fact that their chosen mode of expression is regarded as vandalism and therefore criminalized in most countries. This makes it exceedingly difficult to execute work in visible places, essential for gaining recognition. Motel7 is adamant that she does not do tagging, and that she does not do illegal writing, though she acknowledges that these activities are part of the subculture to which she subscribes. She believes that increased visibility and stature in the formal art world will open doors for her in street art, giving her the opportunity to contribute positively to the increased esteem placed on the genre generally. Her conviction echoes King Adz’s jubilant words: “Street art is the new rock’roll. Urban artists are the new pop stars, just as Warhol would have wanted it to be” (Dreweatts 2008: 4).

Tears and Castles marks the occasion of Motel7’s entrance into the mainstream world of art galleries, at exactly this historical moment when old prejudices against graffiti are turning into acceptance and support for urban contemporary art.

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2008, Gardens, Cape Town

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STREETS AND GENDER

Issues of gender, whether positive or negative, invariably tend to be part of the discourse around the work of women graffiti artists. This is seldom the case with men, due to an underlying assumption that being male is the norm, or neutral, and therefore needs no elaboration, but being female is as good as being an anomaly. Special, in a way.

To be sure, working on the streets can be tough for women. @149st (a website dedicated to the New York graffiti scene), elaborating on the obstacles faced by women graffiti writers, note that late hours and desolate locations can be particularly dangerous. As is the case in many male-dominated fields, the social atmosphere can be ruthless. In addition, female writers are often subjected to all kinds of harassment, ranging from sexual slurs to allegations of reliance on boyfriends to get work done.

In his preface to Graffiti Woman, a book dedicated to the work of women, Nicholas Ganz echoes these concerns, adding that they are more pertinent to graffiti than to street art. Interestingly, the material in his book is organized according to this technical differentiation (graffiti is associated with letters and the spraycan, street art with stencils, stickers and more elaborate techniques), but with regard to sociological aspects Ganz (2006:11) recognizes a difference too: … the street art movement seems more open to

and tolerant of women. It attracts few or none of the ‘male obstacles’ you associate with the graffiti movement, and women tend to be seen in a positive light and supported. This could be something to do with the culture’s ‘young’ history or the ‘safer environment’ of street art – stencilling or putting up a poster can take less time and therefore carries fewer risks – or the fact that street art seems to be an art form in which men don’t feel the need to assert their masculinity to the same degree, an area where women aren’t seen as ‘the competition’.

2007, corner of Albert and Cyrus Streets, Saltriver, Cape Town.

Some women artists are understandably irritated by these issues. They deny that gender matters at all, believing that anonymity equals neutrality. They basically just want to get on with the job without having to deal with extraneous issues.

Swoon, a world-renowned street artist, took this position angrily when she started out: generations of feminists before her had done the protest groundwork, why did she still have to deal with it? As her reputation started spreading, the unquestioning assumption that she must be male because her art was good, amused her. Increasingly though, the spotlight on her became nothing but depressing: “… a lot of attention [was] coming my way for being female, and it just made me feel more alienated and objectified, not to mention patronized. ‘Look at what the girls can do – aren’t they cute?’ To hell with that shit. I didn’t want it” (Ganz 2006:9).

With time, Swoon has become more mellow and has devised her own strategy to rise above the limiting specifics of gender in her work. She positions her art – mostly roughly-drawn, realistic images of ordinary people in ordinary situations – as universally as possible. Using images of men as often as those of women, she considers her work an antidote to the visual attack of advertising, which she sees as “…fake images screaming at us from billboards…irrelevant and cruel” (Ganz 2006:204).

Motel7, at the outset of what promises to be an international career, is also acutely aware of the problems surrounding gender, but in contrast to Swoon, feels no pressing need to engage with them, at least not right now.

She knows she has to be careful around certain issues such as jealousy and competitiveness. But she also understands that visibility is crucial in career building and believes that being female gives her a definite edge, which she backs up with commitment to her street art activities and with technical skill. “To be honest”, she says, “being a woman has never worked against me”. She points out that in any case, in South Africa, gender politics have always taken a back seat to racial politics: the world of graffiti has only recently (within the last decade or so) really opened up to white artists.

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2005, Palmerston Street, Saltriver, Cape Town.

Previously it was almost entirely the realm of racially-determined political activism, and consequently graffiti was ruthlessly persecuted by the authorities. So, at this juncture in time, a sense of heady relief at normality still pervades; the scene is young and exhilarating, opening up more and more, expanding in all directions, not limited by race or gender. This makes her reluctant to make any absolute statements concerning gender; she shrugs the issue off with a smile, eager to embrace whatever opportunities lie in store.

Her cautious and, indeed, perfectly sensible, disinclination to take a hard position around gender has resulted in figures often rendered in a style that is not gender-specific. Highly stylised, her childlike figures are perhaps human, perhaps animal, perhaps male, perhaps female. She relies on this comic quality to put her figures in a space of universal relevance, similar to Swoon’s almost opposite tactic of using stark realism. When she does assert gender, as in the 2008 piece at the corner of Clarence and Mountain streets in Woodstock, where a figure is marked as female by hairstyle, dress and boobs, humour with a discernible dark side remains her preferred mode. The female figure takes an aggressive stance, displaying tattooed forearms, yet has sweet little hearts all over her dress. She exemplifies the sentiment expressed by Motel7 in a 2007 interview: “None of my work is very political: I try to make humorous art. My aim is to make people laugh, or even just smile while they’re on their way to work”(theencoremag.blogspot).

Another noteworthy contrast to the work of Motel7, is that of Faith47, the other conspicuous woman graffiti artist working in Cape Town. Faith47, whose international reputation is well established, frequently writes only her name in huge twisting, distorted and colourfully decorated script with astounding effect. Her figurative work generally includes images of self-reliant, confident women in highly stylised fashion, like comic strip figures. They come across as slick and sexy ‘super heroine’ types, child-women asserting a sense of powerful non-submission; one might even say controlled sexual aggression.

Unlike Motel7, Faith47 is outspoken about aspects of gender she addresses in her work:

Female empowerment is one of the issues I explore in order to inspire and provoke response… In South Africa there are a lot of women who are subservient, disempowered and/or live in abusive environments… Women have the potential to be extremely strong characters. We are the ones who bring children into the world, and teach them about the world. (Ganz

2006:54-55).

Motel7 names Faith47 as one of her role models, yet she has an entirely different take on the messages sent out by her art. Her touch is light, her message lighthearted even as she consciously leaves it to onlookers to decipher a deeper meaning, if they choose: “I like my grumpy characters. You can relate to sad people more than you can to happy people and in a way, everyone is sad.” (theencoremag.blogspot). Her figures conjure up a childhood wonderland where dreams come true, where little girls do as they please, with no constraints.

Tears and Castles, her debut gallery show, puts Motel7 on a path entirely dissimilar to working on the streets. In the gallery world, gender issues play out in different ways altogether. Only time will tell how Motel7’s approach will change, if at all. Judging by her wholehearted commitment to her art, one expects that inventiveness and courage will play a large role in the choices she makes.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dreweatts, 2008. The Urban Art Sale Tuesday 14th October. Auction Catalogue. Ganz, Nicholas, 2006. Graffiti Woman. Graffiti and street art from five continents. London: Thames&Hudson.Lewisohn, Cedar, 2008. Street Art. The graffiti revolution. London: Tate Publishing.Putter, Andrew, 2008. ‘Die skrif is teen die muur: leer dit lees! Bravo! (3) Spring.Personal interviews with Motel7, November – December 2008.http://theencoremag.blogspot.com/2007/07/motel7-graffiti-artist-on-blonde-missio.htmlhttp://www.at149st.com/women.html

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TEARS AND CASTLES – a gallerist’s viewMotel7 is one of only two white women known to have made their mark on the graffiti and street art scene of Cape Town after 1994.

Starting out young, she is poised to follow a career path similar to many international artists like Banksy, Miss Van, Blek le Rat, D*Face and Nick Walker to the urban gallery world. Current trends favour this route in line with the words of King Adz in Dreweatts October 2008 Urban Art Sale catalogue: “Graffiti evolved into Street Art, which has now in turn mutated into Urban Contemporary art – the most exciting and modern form of art; the newest ‘ism’ of art…” Street art is understood in completely opposing ways, and this has become one of its most remarkable aspects. Like graffiti, it is sometimes looked upon with horror as evidence of urban neglect, even nascent criminality, but when shown in a commercial gallery, it is readily accepted as a fine art form. Art lovers might walk straight past painted walls yet in a gallery their approach is very different. The long working hours and furtive creativity of street artists are seldom appreciated; artworks executed with devotion and skill often get removed within a short period of time either by cleaners or by other artists who bomb and deface. These are the hazards of working on the run, and most street artists acknowledge the attraction and excitement of working in an unpredictable environment. Still, a desire for recognition is universal among artists, and those who paint on the streets are no exception. This goal can be achieved by formally exhibiting in a gallery where onlookers are given the opportunity to look at leisure.

The body of work on Tears and Castles is a clear exposition of the dichotomous production and reception of street art. Except for context and presentation, there is, indeed, very little real difference between Motel7’s art on the city streets and the art she produces for gallery walls.

Motel7’s career is set to take off spectacularly with this solo exhibition at 34 Long Fine Art in Cape Town. Her huge, bold street works and murals easily make one forget the deeply embedded foundation of ideas and imagery which she exploits. Like icing slowly melting down the sides of warm cupcakes, intimate detail flows steadily from her canvases. There is a cheerful fluidity in her work that leads the viewer around the artwork and through the exhibition like a chocolate river connecting dripping dots to form strangely familiar shapes. Rich colour is the essence of her work, giving it a cheerful appearance at first though it never strays far from a deep longing for the days of childhood. An often sombre South African landscape morphs into idyllic Scandinavian country scenes where her characters are surrounded by sugar-painted houses, gingerbread men and playpen animals. Smaller elements like skulls and daggers represent hidden dangers and an ominous reality that manifests unexpectedly in clouds, tattoos, tearful toy eyes bright with innocence. Personal experience informs iconic images, making Motel7’s work easy to relate to, easy to look at, yet questioning and edgy.

Passionate and positive, Motel7 is a gallerist’s delight: she has what it takes to become a great Urban Contemporary artist.

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Sally’s trip to the market 2009 mixed media on canvas 80 x 100cm9

Natalya 2008 mixed media on canvas

53 x 40cm

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Sea shore, see saw, I want more 2008 mixed media on canvas 80 x 60cm

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Ustinya 2008 mixed media on canvas

67 x 50cm

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The biggest secret 2008 mixed media on canvas 100 x 80cm

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Cindy 2008 mixed media on canvas

80 x 60cm

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Sweet surrender 2009 mixed media on canvas 100 x 80cm

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Thomas 2009 mixed media on canvas 80 x 100cm16

Mizaru 2009 mixed media on canvas 85 x 65cm

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Iwazaru 2009 mixed media on canvas

85 x 65cm

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Tekla 2008 mixed media on canvas 40 x 30cm

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Kikazaru 2009 mixed media on canvas

80 x 60cm

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Triple Delux 2009 mixed media on canvas 200 x 70cm

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Rage, rage, against the dying of the light 2008 mixed media on canvas

60 x 40cm

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Henry 2008 mixed media on paper 37 x 27cm

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Death by cupcake 2008 mixed media on paper

37 x 27cm

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Japan is great 2008 mixed media on paper 37 x 27cm

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Sandy 2008 mixed media sculpture 17 cm

Sally 2008 mixed media sculpture 17 cm

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Mike 2008 mixed media sculpture

17 cm

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MOTEL7 RESUMÉ2009 Solo exhibition Tears and Castles, 34 Long Fine Art Cape Town South Africa.

2008 Completed animation course. Media: Illustrator, Maya, spray paint, markers, acrylic paint, wheat paste, water colour.

2008 Took part in a group show coordinated by Shelflife (Cape Town graffiti gallery/shop) Italian comic festival. http://crack.forteprenestino.net/2008/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1774&Itemid=33

2007 Involved on several projects with Falko painting murals with positive messages in less affluent areas around Cape Town.

2007 Took part in exhibition in Minneapolis B-girl be featuring women graffiti artists from around the world.

2007 Exhibition with collective The Lovesick Posse, Justin and Loveme at The Bin, Cape Town.

2007 R100.00 show at The Bin, Cape Town.

2006 Worked with Nike, Reebok and Puma on various décor projects.

2006 Enrolled at Animation School for full course. 2005 Completed school, interest in graffiti aroused by travels in Europe.

2004 One year of fine art at Michaelis. 1987 Born in Cape Town South Africa of Irish and Norwegian parents.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Not every graffiti artist gets the opportunity to show their work in a professional gallery, and I would like to thank some people that have helped me get there, and for always inspiring me.

Mom and Dad - thank you thank you thank you.

Fred, Andries, Antoinette and everyone at 34 Long Fine Art, Maddin, Wayne, Ian, Ben, Jade, Sean, Leslie, Dom, Kieron, Cindy, Kai, Mika, Jason, Josie, Mandy, Sean McVeigh, Bryn, Brad, Sos, Ryan, Jen, Davey Jones, Lee, Tyler, Faith47, Shelflife, Lovestick (RIP), Falko, Toe, Play1, Cros, Sure, Crabs, MBS, Tesk, Daniel Ting Chong, Kronk, Theory1, Flyonthewall.

MOTEL7

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