Botes gives an entirely new identity to an old country cupboard by conferring on it a new set of doors, inserted into which are glazed, painted panels. Repurposed and playfully remodelled furniture lends an iconoclastic edgy dynamic to spaces calm as a gallery.
There’s something curiously orthodox, even conventional, about Conrad Botes’s home in a Victorian-era suburb of Cape Town. Given this artist’s outrageous vision of the world, that’s rather surprising. Much of his work, visually aligned with Pop or post-Pop Art and comic-book style, through his and Anton Kannemeyer’s Bitterkomix adult comic books, is charged with subversive, cutting storylines that poke a finger at a range of issues, among them the sacred icons of Afrikaner culture and the ‘sugary infantilism’ of pop culture, images that are sometimes pornographic, often angry or mocking, and always uneasy, bittersweet. His recent forensic landscape lithographs and satirical portraits, ‘Zombie Babylon’, was a send-up of the relationship between consumerism and zombie culture. Yet the immaculate home that this gentle giant of the art world shares with Jeanne, his décor editor wife, and their child, is devoid of the dystopian madness of his world-view. It’s been thought out, mostly by Jeanne, as a contemporary living space that supports the need to display Conrad’s work. His style is eclectic and he works in a variety of media, making sculpture, or painting on glass or furniture. He considers himself primarily to be a comic-book artist, his illustration typified by a graphic black outline filled with flat colour.
In a sense this house is a curated space. Is that you or Jeanne?
‘It’s a bit of both. It’s her choice of fabrics, furniture, lighting and so on. And the way she displays things on tables and arranges the books. She’s the decorating expert. It’s what she does for a living. She’s also the boss. My input surrounds individual objects: for instance I made the kitchen table. And the cupboard beside it was in my studio for years before I jazzed it up a bit and added a cornice and some feet. It went from being a studio cupboard to a “kos kas”. There’s been a lot of upcycling by me!
‘There’s a lot of my own art in the house, alongside art I’ve acquired by trading with friends. I swapped some of my work for some Marlene Dumas prints. There’s work by Clare Menck, and a collection of sculptures: mine, Claudette Schreuders’s and other people’s, in the room at the front. I’m always adding to that. I’ve made a bit of an installation out of it along the mantelpiece and around the shelves. There are portraits at the bottom of the stairs: one of Johann Louw’s, two of mine, one of Sanell Aggenbach’s. It’s just a collection that I wanted to hang in a certain way.’
There’s another installation of pictures he’s acquired over the years hanging on the wall halfway up the stairs. They’re random things, ranging from Brett Murray’s little postcard to a drawing by a famous comic artist who lives in Paris, to a vintage junk-shop photograph of somebody else’s family, and a Goya reproduction. Some are large, others tiny; most are originals, although one’s a photocopy. The frames are different and unusual. The curator in Botes is making articulate decisions about where the pictures are positioned, and alongside what, all the time adding or taking away, a dynamic arrangement that grows organically as he finds other pieces to complete his vision. This is the illustrator at work.
Looking at the stillness of the installations, what becomes evident is the tremendous precision of these objects aligned and mapped like a grid, a rigorous, orderly placement that offsets the comic-book anarchy of his satirical art and sculptures. It’s totemic, ironic, but oddly calming.
Do you think, generally speaking, there’s such a thing as an artist’s house, as there might be a writer’s house or a chef’s house?
‘Yes, and no.’
But do you think artist’s houses reflect their style of work?
‘I do. I think the houses are as diverse as their work, and each artist has a house that reflects their individuality in different ways.’
Is there anything here that reflects, or informs, what you’re putting into the art you’re making?
‘No, not literally. But maybe there’s a look and feel …’
A visual clarity?
‘Yes. For instance, the white window frames against the grey of the house produce an interesting graphic clarity that I relate to.’ This clutter-free house has the appearance of an art installation. It may be the work of a décor editor, but essentially it’s absolutely in sync with the artistic precision of Botes and his work. It’s bold, yet there’s restraint; the strident colours are amplified by the flat, two-dimensional quality of the overall appearance of the interior. There’s brightness and yet there’s a froideur; together, they incite the merest feeling of unease in anyone who visits.
The living area at the end of the kitchen takes a visual cue from Brett Murray’s teasing quotation. Naked pendant light bulbs and their looped cords exaggerate the interior’s clean, graphic aesthetic. On the walls a lithograph and two silkscreens, all by Botes.
Claudette Schreuders’s Small Boy sculpture accompanies a crowd of totemic menacing wooden figures by Conrad Botes on the mantel above the living-room fireplace.
In the living room, a painted sky-blue cupboard houses sculpture by Frank van Reenen, toys by Tim Burton, and paintings by Madeleine Marincowitz and Botes himself.
Every wall surface, even in the kitchen, houses art; if not by South African painters or sculptors then by ceramicists like Ruan Hoffmann. There’s work by Rob Ryan and Seletti, Orla Kiely and artist-craftsmen showcased by US retailer Anthropologie.
Cool, clean and functional, the presentation of the living room is almost forensic in its clarity. High-gloss polyurethane and battleship-grey paint supply a neutral backdrop to offset eye-popping artworks by, among others, Anton Kannemeyer, Claudette Schreuders and Botes himself. A dab hand in the workshop, the bookcases and the table separating them are also Botes’s work.
(clockwise from top left): In the guest bedroom, Lovesick (2011), by Conrad, hangs above the bed whose cover is a tablecloth by Danish designer Margrethe Odgaard; vintage floor tiles from Argentina serve as a washbasin’s splashback; daughter Nell sleeps under the watchful gaze of Botes’s fantasy mermaid; a small mixed media installation combines work by Botes, Frank van Reenen, and Botes and Mikhael Subotzky in collaboration.
In the upstairs corridor, that shiny, forensic look continues, countered by patterned visual interest from Botes’s artworks and prints propped on a narrow bench, made by Botes. Pattern here, as elsewhere, is pulled back by the matt and gloss surfaces.
Beside the bed in the main bedroom, the small black-and-white artwork, Faceless (1993), by Marlene Dumas is a welcome respite from the graphic noise of the Marimekko fabric on the bed and Vivienne Westwood’s Squiggle wallpaper. Botes’s Children’s Story features on the back wall.
Botes removed the original panels from the doors of the old hall cupboard and replaced them with painted glass, trademark comic Tintin and faux-naif images. Throughout the house he has repurposed older pieces to do away with rustic charm in favour of the ‘shock of the new’.