South Africa Blog

The his­toric Cape Winelands town of Tulbagh is host­ing a Spring Arts Festival over the week­end of 26–28 August 2011, cel­eb­rat­ing the arts in all their var­ied forms. The fest­ival also coin­cides with the spring wild­flowers, which include sev­eral vari­et­ies of rare endemic bulbs that only flower in the Tulbagh val­ley. It is aimed at rais­ing funds for the Tulbagh Community Gardens and Galgeheuwel Reserve ini­ti­at­ive, which will cre­ate a pub­lic pleas­ure garden for the enjoy­ment of all in his­toric Church Street.

The Tulbagh Spring Arts Festival is head­lining with the open­ing of the Christo Coetzee House Museum and Gallery (post renov­a­tion of the dilap­id­ated barn, where Coetzee painted from 1973 until his death in 2000, and the Rhenish mis­sion­ary house where he lived behind the stu­dio.) For the dur­a­tion of the fest­ival the work of past, present and future mas­ters of the val­ley will be on display.

Christo Coetzee is obvi­ously our past mas­ter. The South African Encyclopedia says about Coetzee’s work: “He has broadened art in the sense that he con­trib­uted to the fad­ing of the tra­di­tional bound­ar­ies between paint­ing and sculp­ture and because he insisted on viewer par­ti­cip­a­tion in the cre­at­ive pro­cess. More…