The South 32 Collection was first assembled in 1994 under its former name The Gencor Collection. It is one of the first of its kind to collect ‘equally’ and from the onset across South Africa’s racialised demographics. Although the collection marks the country’s crucial political turn, it holds works that document other pivotal and important moments in South Africa’s history.
The exhibition of selected works from the South 32 Collection borrows its title from the work, Handle with Care (1994) by Johannesburg based artist Kagiso Pat Mautloa. The title "Handle with Care" allows us to centre one of the most important values of the Javett Art Centre - that of care. In this way the exhibition firmly situates the idea of an art centre as a public space of care, furthermore it highlights our role in taking care of art collections that were previously semi-private, by facilitating their mediation in the construction of repositories of knowledge.
Thought of as a Laboratory of Ideas, the public programme for "Handle with Care" seeks to provide a discursive platform within which the themes of the exhibition are explored and interrogated at greater depth. The programme brings together diverse and disparate practices that think around questions concerning visuality, the space of the unthought, sociality, institutionalisation and the role of art spaces within contemporaneity. The Laboratory of Ideas exists as a fluid and constantly changing repository that positions not only the historical significance of the South 32 collection, but also its relevance within our affective present.
We begin the public programme with a conversation between Gabi Ngcobo, the interim curatorial director of the Javett-UP with Kendall Geers, the former curator of "The Gencor Collection" now known as the South32 Collection. The practitioners discuss various historical moments that led to, and have since transpired during and/or after acquisition of the South 32 collection.
Artwork: Kagiso Pat Mautloa, Handle With Care, mixed media, 1994.