THERESA TAYLOR

A fire of broken glass pours from a cottage window on Bertrams Road. Grey and black armed figures, in two groups, fight with fury as the smoke fades into the sky.

It’s a scene of horror, but passers-by are nonchalant.

They see this mosaic tribute to the 1922 miners’ strike daily.

It’s part of their neighbourhood’s landscape, as permanent as the grassy lots and sprinkling of litter.

The battle isn’t happening today, but it did happen in Bertrams Road, 90 years ago.

“There is a point at which heritage and art meet,” says Eric Itzkin, deputy director of the arts, culture and heritage directorate of the city. “We can showcase the heritage of an area through art… not simply cold monuments.”

There are more than 300 artworks installed in the inner city bearing testimony to this.

Driving through the Fietas and Fordsburg Links, pictures on both sides of the tunnel whisk past you like a multicoloured sketch of a friend’s dream; they are part of an artwork called Subway Mural.

It was composed of memories and old photographs of the people who lived in Fietas before it was destroyed in 1976.

Itzkin refers to the area’s half-rebuilt state as a “mouth with some of the teeth pulled out”. “In a sense (the art) is trying to stand in place of all that (was destroyed).”

In the early 1990s, vandalisation of the Impala Stampede by sculptor Herman Wald, in the Ernest Oppenheimer Park, became a symbol of inner city decay. It was eventually removed by the Oppenheimer family, who had donated it, repaired and relocated to the Main Street Precinct.

Commissioning of public art for the city was haphazard and badly funded, but in 2003 Itzkin was part of a team that erected a statue of Gandhi in Gandhi Square. It was the first public statue of a non-white individual in the city. Its success spurred Itzkin and his directorate to draft the first public art policy for the city.

The policy states that 1 percent of the construction budget of all major city building projects be devoted to public art.

This money has created ceramic cows – by Bizana artist Andile Mswangelwa – that graze next to the Error Street taxi rank.

It has allowed artist Marina Walsh to create Walter and Albertina Sisulu facing each other on Diagonal Street, near the office where Walter worked as an estate agent.

It has built a giant concrete sculpture, Impala, at the entrance to Braamfontein.

Itzkin says the directorate works closely with the Johannesburg Development Agency, and often receives funding from them to place art in the areas that they are upgrading.

A tour of a handful of the artworks reveals the majority are in good condition, although a water pump is broken on Invented Mythologies, Joburg’s most expensive artwork at R1 million.

Itzkin explains that Joburg has not fallen into the same political trap as Durban, where relations became so bad between the creator of an elephant sculpture and the city that he took them to court.

“The art we create here celebrates a range of heritages,” he says, “not only a political heritage.”

Stephen Hobbs of The Trinity Session, and one of the artists who works on the commissioning committee, says: “(We think about) who the city is being rejuvenated for.”

The Trinity Session was involved in returning to its former glory the spot in the Ernst Oppenheimer Park that once housed the dismembered Stampeding Impala.

The Park Bokkies, 12 small buck sitting and standing as they would in nature, take up the space.

Accompanying the artwork are various pieces, including large models of the words “EGOLI you make my dreams come true”.

l For tours of the city’s public art e-mail The Trinity Session on sh@onair.co.za or mn@onair.co.za.