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- Good, Better, Best. From The Next 48 Hours
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Good, Better, Best. From The Next 48 Hours
The Muse 08 exhibition at iart Gallery, Loop Street, is essential viewing before it closes on 5 May. City dwellers of a certain age (mine) will happily remember Idols - the then cutting edge nightclub in the same location. Uber architect Stefan Antoni designed the interior and I couldn’t help remind myself of the layout of that club while looking at the art.
Founding owner of the iart Gallery, Elana Brundyn says: ‘Muse-08 creates a unique opportunity in social documentation by celebrating the lives of individuals who have shaped South African culture through the visual arts,
performing arts and new media. Poets and patrons, visionaries and villains, actors and activists, all who play prominent roles in South African Arts and Culture have been captured on paper and canvas by our country’s leading artists.’
I think the work is arresting. Elizabeth Gunter’s Louis Jansen Van Vuuren with dog is gentle and beautiful.
Eris Silke’s portrayal of Louis Schachat is artfully respectful while Reshada Crouse’s potent picturing of Rian Malan burns the inner eye like the acrid smoke of burning tyres. Paul Emsley’s William Kentridge is the boast of the exhibition and is so exact that even careful looks make it difficult to see that it is sketched rather than photographed. I loved Sam Nhlengethwa three Zwelethu Mthethwas with jaunty hats.
Although the work premiered at the KKNK, the launch party by Dagmar Schumacher, elevated it from exhibition to event. Despite being a regular guest, I am frequently amazed at who I meet at her parties. Not, you might think the same list of shelbs and vips each time. She manages to not only hand-pick the right people, but get them there too - the rarest of achievements in Cape Town. I was delighted with Annelize Buchanan’s canapés.
Not just her usual elegant munchies, but mini boerie rolls, bobotie bites and waterblommetjie stews. As sponsor Media 24’s Ton Vosloo quipped in his opening address that it was the first art exhibition he’d attended where brandy and coke cocktails were served.
For further information call (27) (21) 424 5150, email info@iart.co.za or visit www.iart.co.za
I was dismissive of The Mount Nelson Hotel’s Librisa Spa at its premature pre-launch last year. I felt that it was too similar to other offerings and that I expected more from such a venerated institution.
Attending the actual launch this week proved me wrong. The conversion of historic houses in adjoining Faure Street, our city’s oldest, into a spa complex is as elegant and luxurious as I hoped. Treatment rooms are spacious, well appointed and, most essential for a spa, relaxing.
There are no machines. The spa promises healing through pure, natural products and touch therapies. I was impressed by the product knowledge of the therapists and pleased to see a number of male therapists.
The Librisa Spa is a luxury experience and, as is expected, it comes at an elevated price. A Men’s Pedicure is R215 for 40 minutes while a Librisa Pink Clay and Geranium (the fynbos variety after which the spa is named) facial is R350 for 60 minutes.
The Librisa experiences are packaged treatments that include delicious Afternoon Tea and Spa lunches. How about splashing out R1800 on a three-hour experience that includes Green Tea detox, Remineralising Facial and Reflexology followed by lunch.
Plunge pool, steam and sauna facilities in both men and women’s change rooms and a beautiful conservatory for post-treatment chill-out are special. The Librisa Spa at the Mount Nelson 021-483-1550.
[17-Apr-08]
Brian Berkman
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