Stephan Welz Series of Talks and Presentations

With more than twenty talks, presentations, discussions, and breakfast sessions, this year’s series offers the widest variety of topics, to date, on our programme.
The visual arts feature strongly with topics ranging from A Life in Art with Frank Kilbourn, Executive Chairman of Strauss & Co and the Power of Abstract Art by Marilyn Martin, art academic and curator, to Stories behind the Canvas with social historian, Felicity Jervis and Rock Art of the Western Cape by John Parkington, Emeritus Professor in Archeology at the University of Cape Town. Michael Godby, Emeritus Professor at the Michaelis School of Fine Art will discuss Contemporary South African Photography: The Past in the Present: Continuity and Disruption while Christopher Till, Director of the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg as well as the director of the Gold of Africa Museum in Cape Town, will present a talk titled: What Remains is Tomorrow. Art and metaphor will be the subject of a discussion, Who is Alice? between two well-known artists and sculptors, Wilma Cruise and Gordon Froud.

Custodian on a Tight Rope, is the title of a panel discussion chaired by Stefan Hundt, curator of the Sanlam Art Collection. Michael Godby and Lien Botha will discuss their roles as FynArts curators. Michael is the curator of Transitions, the exhibition of work by Willie Bester, Festival Artist, and Lien is the curator of Sculpture on the Cliffs. In a second panel discussion, also chaired by Stefan Hundt, Marilyn Martin and Christopher Till will discuss South African Art Museums: Quo Vadis?

Two very prominent achievers will discuss their recently published books at the festival. They are Bill Nasson, Distinguised Professor in the Department of History at Stellenbosch University who wrote History Matters, and Dikgang Moseneke, Ex-Deputy Chief Justice of the Costitutional Court who published his autobiography, My Own Liberator. They will be in conversation with writer Christopher Hope. For a musical note, traditional music artist and cultural historian, Dizu Plaatjies of Amapondo fame and currently a lecturer at the UCT Department of Ethnomusicology will present The Music of Sub – Saharan Africa, while Pianoman, Charl du Plessis, a Steinway Artist and lecturer at the University of Pretoria, will talk about Crossover Music: the Black Sheep of Champion?

Also on the programme is a presentation by consulting architect, Alex Robertson and Jo-Anne Duggan, an Associate Research Fellow in the Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative, UCT, on the design, development and challenges of West Coast Fossil Park: a new centre. In his talk Sustainability Through Science and Environment, Ichthyologist, Mike Bruton, will refer to the story of the coelacanth and great South African inventions in discussing the importance of popular science and environmental writing in adressing the environmental crisis. Another richly illustrated presentation related to the environment is The Art of Deception in the Behaviour of Birds, by the well-known and knowledgeable birder, Anton Odendal. And for something completely different, Dr James Gray will talk about the Summer of ’42: The Fall of Tobruk about which he says: seventy-five years on, the story of the fall of Tobruk is deserving of re-telling… bringing home to a younger generation the tragic events that affected the lives of thousands of young South Africans.