IN PICS | Out and about at Africa's premier contemporary art fair

Some art fairs are just posh excuses to party — but if you’re serious about snapping up contemporary African art then the only place to be on Thursday evening was at the Cape Town International Convention Centre.

That was where the vernissage (that’s arts-speak for a private viewing of works before the doors open to the public) for this year’s Investec Cape Town Art Fair took place.

It was a slightly windy evening as I made my way into what was once a field hospital at the height of the pandemic but which is now back to the business of being the Mother City’s top trade and exhibition space.

Completing the quick Covid-19 screening on my phone, and then showing my vaccination e-certificate to an attendant, I made my way inside.

First stop was the booth my colleagues at Wanted magazine had set up, where I am offered a flute of Boschendal Brut and say hello to artist Azael Langa, whose painting technique combines smoke and ink.

Past a starkly intriguing work by Cape Town-based Jared Ginsburg titled Letter 4, 2021, I notice a familiar face I last saw on the Sona red carpet when she was accompanying her then DA MP sister Phumzile Van Damme.

That’s Qiniso Van Damme, whose own claim to fame is being SA’s first Bachelorette on the M-Net reality TV show.

Qiniso was there with the bloke she ended up giving her last rose to: Gareth Ehret, who tells me he works in TV production.

I ask if there’s any chance of a televised traipse down the aisle?

Qiniso pours cold water on the idea of bringing the cameras into her love life again. “I’m my own person, not a lady of the night. I make my own decisions,” she says cryptically.

On to saying hello to one of the land’s most beautiful women, who I first got to have tea with the day after she was crowned Miss SA way back in 2001.

More than two decades and four children later (her youngest turned a year old in October), Jo-Ann Strauss can still pull off an ensemble showing off her toned midriff.

What’s next for the TV personality and entrepreneur?

“I’m working on an exciting project in the art world that launches on March 8,” she tells me.

Around the corner I come across a towering sculpture called Agoodjie I at a spacious booth taken by the esteemed Everard Read Gallery.

Turns out the work is by Nandipha Mntambo, who tells me it is inspired by the famed African female warriors of Benin.

“Agoodjie was the name they used for the women in the army in Dahomey,” she explains. “It has a double meaning — the backbone of society, and also the one who comes from behind.”

A quick hello to the fabulously dressed Laura Windvogel, who back in the day used to sell my clothes for a Cape Town store and now goes by the name of Lady Skollie, the award-winning artist and feminist activist.

Forget your Louis Vuitton and Gucci, Skollie had hands down the night’s best arm candy: a bag that looked like a packet of cheese curls.

I move on to one of my other artist faves, Billie Zangewa, who is taking a much-needed break (she did four shows and a museum exhibition during the pandemic).

Next I come across a man in a monochrome outfit featuring crocheted patches and a tulle and feathered mask which was a sight to behold.

That’s Roman Handt, who has ditched fashion design for a more lucrative career as an artist.

“I can just stitch, and it fits first time,” he says of his works.

On to meeting someone who is all the buzz in the global art world: Khanyisile Mbongwa, who is going from being chief curator for the Stellenbosch Triennale to the UK as the curator for the Liverpool Biennial in 2023.

Khanyisile tells me she is waiting for her visa to come through so she can head to England for what she described as a “listening session” — visiting studios and sites, meeting with the board “and really to listen and find out why Liverpool has chosen me to do this. I call it forensic attention.”

One cannot survive on champers alone, so off I head to Riva, the Italian fish restaurant in nearby De Waterkant, where Wanted magazine is holding an intimate dinner.

In walks Carol Bouwer, her outfit accessorised with her latest handbag in bold fuchsia fashioned from exotic skins and appropriately called Momo — not only a nod to the Joburg gallery but also after her partner in her recently launched fragrance.

Next I head a little further down the road to Green Point to a house tucked away in a side street which is home to a place called the Strangers Club.

That’s where the fair was hosting many of the international collectors who flew in to attend the fair and snap up the African art which caught their eyes.

Past a table groaning under fresh oysters, I meet one such collector: Andrea Boghi, a charming Italian man who runs the family steel business which has plants in Italy and France.

And then on to meeting Lady Linda Wong Davies, who is one of those super-rich philanthropists who are helping to increase global demand for what our local artists are conjuring up.

She tells me that through her UK-based KT Wong Foundation she is “creating cultural bridges and platforms between China and the world — and now, we are coming to focus on Africa”.

But enough art talk, you want to know about the food — and besides the burrata there was a table of Italian cold meats, a pasta station featuring fresh fusilli with authentic Italian tomato sauce, basil leaves and parmesan cheese. But for me, the ice-cream cones topped with specially batch-made vanilla ice cream from the Ice Cream Lovers laboratory in Steenberg was the best way to finish off the evening.