AT a time when education conjures images of protest and burning, mark this one down as a #MustNotFall kind of initiative.
Launched in 2010 by then-cabinet minister and long-time Cape Town activist Trevor Manuel as a parliamentary “constituency” project, the Mitchells Plain Bursary and Role Model Trust ticks the right community boxes.
Founded in the belief that “without community mobilisation in support of young people who show they have the potential to succeed, there will be little prospect of placing education at the centre of our collective efforts to confront the scourges of poverty, inequality and the hold that drugs and gangsterism have over the lives of so many”, the trust works in close consultation with all 17 schools in Mitchells Plain, disbursing more than R1 million a year.
Last year 82 students were assisted at universities, universities of technology and technical vocational education and training colleges. But social conscience and good works shouldn’t be the only motivator for your presence at the trust’s inaugural art auction at the Taj Hotel on Wednesday evening. There is also some art that deserves to be seen.
There is, for instance, a pair of linocuts – one a District Six cityscape, the other a still life – by Gregoire Boonzaaier, an artist whose paintings regularly realise millions at auction.
And then there is something that has never come to auction before: a signature work by the storied artist, Joyce Ntobe. Nor is an Ntobe likely to come up again in the near future – if only because Ntobe doesn’t exist.
She was/is invented by Cape Town artist Beezy Bailey in 1985 to make a point about the art establishment. Bailey submitted two works for consideration in a competition, one under his own name and the other as Ntobe. His work was rejected, while Ntobe’s was
enthusiastically accepted.
What is striking about the works on the auction is an aesthetic of the Cape Flats, shot through with the identity and the idiosyncrasy of local communities.
In the work of artists like Kervin Cupido and Sandy Esau, this aesthetic comes through in scenes from everyday life – West Coast fishermen in Cupido’s vision, and Esau’s football game.
Another immediately striking exponent is Selwyn Pekeur, whose works combine a folksy humour with a sureness of touch and immediacy of expressiveness.
Organiser and provincial parliament member Cameron Dugmore said the trust was hoping to raise around R1m from the auction and a golf day that was in the pipeline.