Hovering above a tangle of pipes and valves cladding the house, and the sculpture Arrival (1994) made of found objects, a sunroom has distant views of Table Mountain. ‘Everything is connected to everything else, just like a political system.’
Hovering above a tangle of pipes and valves cladding the house, and the sculpture Arrival (1994) made of found objects, a sunroom has distant views of Table Mountain. ‘Everything is connected to everything else, just like a political system.’
Since May 16th 1998, Willie Bester, his wife Evelyn and their three children have been living in Kuilsriver in an eviscerated stop-and-stare house whose innards appear to be wrapped around the outside. Kuilsriver is very proud of its resident artist. Visitors to the suburb are taken on a drive and shown the house from the street. Willie joins the ranks of Marlene Dumas, who grew up on a wine farm up the road, and Herman Charles Bosman, born here in 1901.
It’s quite a place. Shocking at first, even harsh. At worst, it’s a brazen accumulation of pipes, gauges and valves, bits of engine and bicycle, industrial detritus and junk, cut and welded together then reassembled, brightly painted, as a dwelling. At best, it’s a work of riotous colour and eye-popping originality of repurposed sculpture – one of Bester’s own masterpieces, its gritty appearance a comment on the ability of a phoenix to rise from unpromising ashes, and thus a comment on South Africa’s historical shifts and transformations. Like a huge mechanical beast created by a mad Victorian professor, it looks like it might at any moment get up and clank away, uttering its barbaric yawp over the rooftops.
Inside, the interiors display works by contemporary South African artists, including William Kentridge, Brett Murray, George Pemba, and Bester’s own work. There’s a good deal of play with verticals and raised levels. A double-volume living space, for which Escher might have provided the template, contains a collection of iconic apartheid signage, an old geyser masquerading as a bar and a petrol pump doing time as a hi-fi cabinet, while a vintage 1962 Fiat 500 is suspended from the ceiling on chains. Bought by Evelyn for R1900, the car was a bargain. With cushions plumping up the interior and little steps up to it, Willie, Evelyn or one of their guests can rock away as one might in a mechanised hammock. Nearby, a gantry up ‘in the gods’ is put to good use when in-house poetry readings need an elevated vantage point above the throngs attending one of the many parties held here.
Then there are the jutting gaudy pipes and valves, masses of them, all making a contribution to a work of art that appears to be not yet finished. There’s wit here in bucket loads, but it’s also an art experiment. You feel like an explorer who stumbles across a salvage project on a building site, surrounded by metalwork plastered with paint in primary colours, by memorabilia of the fraught 1980s, by what might pass for eccentric plumbing clambering up from hidden artesian wells under the floor of a Lego factory.
For Willie and Evelyn, their creative partnership flourishes in this vortex of raucous energies, ideas and sculptural chaos. There are windmills, fountains, blue and purple mosaics, geometric Ndebele designs on outer walls, old railway sleepers for kitchen counters. Found objects from unlikely places integrated into what has to be the most highly developed and idiosyncratic personal iconography of any South African artist working today.
Who is Willie Bester at home and out in the world? He’s an involved and challenging artist who, through his mixed-media paintings, canvas assemblages and metal sculptures, emerged as one of this country’s most important ‘struggle artists’. Many of his installations were created from scrap materials found on Cape Flats rubbish dumps. He has worked with many socially committed artists and collectives to produce layered collages and sculptures, simultaneously a protest against dehumanising conditions and crafted to reveal the cosmopolitan influences of Pop and Dada. Even now, his work continues to explore contemporary themes arising from the challenges of the post-apartheid society.
Is your house a ‘normal’ house or your studio, or is it an artwork?
‘It’s difficult to say. The house is part of the studio. Random ideas come through, and I implement them in the building. I had to remove myself from the idea of “normal” because so many people kept coming to visit me and I found it difficult to mix family life and studio life. This building allows them to exist together, but separately.’
So what am I looking at? It looks like the house simply grew organically. Was there a master plan for it?
‘It started off with a model I’d made of metal. Architect Carin Smuts (of CS Studio Architects) got involved, but essentially Evelyn and I, maybe more Evelyn than I, designed it with a mixture of pragmatism and the need to provide somewhere to work and, maybe, to show the work as well. I got my wife’s nephew in to do the building and I did the metal parts. There are a lot of pipes, and stuff found in junkyards, in the townships, hospitals, wherever.’
The view from Bester’s mezzanine studio to the living space below. The gantry (top left) is a stage for poetry readings.
Portrait of the artist astride Poverty Driven (2006) made from junkyard finds. Above, suspended from the ceiling, a vintage Fiat 500.
The house itself is a sculpture, every element of its construction conveying a dynamic statement or symbol intrinsic to Willie Bester’s community politics and art. ‘It’s an ongoing project. With time, my perceptions change, and if I find a certain part boring, I just rework it.’
On the stair, an apartheid-era sign from Groote Schuur Hospital directs Whites to B6 corridor in the Whites Only section.
Chemical Warfare (2007), from Bester’s series of child soldiers, is made from welded metal sheets. It gazes down on his studio worktable.
The Besters’ living space is a place in which to contemplate a variety of the artist’s work including Industrial Society (2007), which comments on the exploitation of workers in the mining industry. At the rear is a cupboard Willie made from unlikely recycled materials: a metal-frame window, floorboards and some trolley wheels.
An exterior detail with water pipes and valves. ‘The theme is always water. In the townships, getting water was, and still is, always a struggle. In other suburbs, water was taken for granted. That might have changed, but providing life is still hard in the townships and this house has a broader message about that.’
The bar is made from found objects, the stools are an assemblage of water pumps from trucks. The sign came from a railway warehouse.