Hail to the Thief: Brett Murray’s Ironic Salute to the Government

South Africa Mon 22-11-2010

Hail to the Thief: Brett Murray’s Ironic Salute to the Government
By Lloyd Pollak | AfricanColours.com

“Are you disillusioned with events since the ANC came to power?” I cautiously inquire of Brett Murray.

“Aaaabsoooluuuteeely!” Never has the word been spat out with such vituperative finality. In Brett’s mouth it becomes a force de frappe. The vowels rat-tat-tat like machine guns, the consonants malevolently hiss, and the ‘b’ turns into an explosive glottal stop, loading the adverb with loathing and contempt. We erupt into rowdy guffaws, but disenchantment and sorrow lurk beneath the mirth.

Myth, Cash, Cult by Brett Murray

^{Myhth, Cash, Cult | Alluminium, Paint, Resin | 50cmX27cm | Brett Murray | 2010}

On a recent visit to New York, Brett spied the graffito ‘Hail to the thief”. He immediately grasped how the salutation summed up the venality of our government, and he decided - there and then - to make it the title of his new show, a scorching satirical exposé of the graft, swank and sleaze of our ruling elite.

On entering the Goodman, I felt as if I had been transported in a time machine back to 1958, and that once again I was entering the portals of the Russian Pavilion at the Brussels World Fair as I did with my parents as a child, for at first glance the gallery seemed to be filled with bludgeoning specimens of Soviet propaganda glorifying the president, the party, the state and the people.

The hammer and the sickle, the five-sided star, the sheaves of corn, sunbursts, triumphant workers, smokestacks, pylons, flags and banners were everywhere at the Goodman.

This rousing idiom remained completely unknown in apartheid South Africa as anything emanating from behind the iron curtain was banned. During the 80’s, the forces of resistance appropriated it, and made it the visual language of the Struggle.

Brett resuscitates it once again with purely parodic intentions. The artist exploits the apparatchik’s tool of mass manipulation, swindle and hoax to pull the wool away from, rather than over, our eyes, filling the space with sarcastic triumphalist monuments to ANC nation building and transformation whilst pointing up the party’s ideological mendacity and emphasizing the hollowness of its supposed achievements.

Hail to the The Thief by Brett Murray

^{Hail to the Thief | Metal, Gold and Silver Leaf | 2010}

Viva, Vavi by Brett Murray

^{Viva Vavi | Metal, Gold and Silver Leaf | 2010}

Take ‘Viva Vavi’ for example. This gilded and silvered aluminum cut-out is executed in a pure Stalinist idiom of grandiose scale, symmetry, frontality and planarity. It forms an heraldic insignia - composed of corn sheaths, ribbons, sunbursts, the dollar sign, the Soviet star and the words ‘Viva Viva’ - that conveys how the party elite exploit a spurious Marxist revolutionary idealism to conceal their financial greed and misappropriation of state funds.

Corruption is one implicit theme of Brett’s many coats of arms which rely on front/back divisions to hint at the transgressions that take place behind the glittering façade.

“Hail to the Thief” almost asphyxiates one with the sour reek of curdled dreams and broken promises. The show targets government’s wholehearted commitment to embezzlement and bling, emphasizes its failure to achieve its objectives, and questions the future of democracy in what is becoming a monolithic one party state poised to entrench itself behind an impregnable wall of censorship.

Although the satire proves excoriating, the mirth is redemptive. The bracing tonic of Brett’s Aristophanic wit provokes gales of laughter that clear the air of lies, half-truths and cant. When one sees the words ‘Forward Comrades’ placed beneath the Johnny Walker symbol of the striding 18th century toff, or Joseph Stalin rising above the words “Tribal Elder”, one dissolves in fits of mirth as Brett’s exposure of the ANC’s Bollinger and Beluga pseudo-Marxism is right on target.

Never a dull moment by Brett Murray

^{Never a dull moment | Metal, paint, Gold leaf | 148 cm x 238 cm x 12cm | 2010}

However the party faithful, the politically correct, the struggle dudes and the white liberal activists of yore will recoil in horror, for Brett emerges as the supreme iconoclast, spitting on High Altars and violating every taboo. Just as Russian artists merrily took the piss out of Soviet propaganda and Socialist Realism after the fall of Communism, so Brett profanes the anti-apartheid Holy of Holies by subverting the visual icons of the Struggle.

“Three iconic 80’s struggle posters provided the kernel of the show and kick-started the creative process” says Brett. “Although they had become sacrosanct emblems of the struggle, I parodied them by changing the slogans.”

The first work takes the poster commemorating the execution of the Freedom Fighter Solomon Mahlangu, and to Solomon’s final words pronounced immediately before he mounted the gallows “Tell my people that I loved them and they must continue the struggle”, Brett adds “for Chivas Regal, Merc’s and kickbacks.”

The naïve and literal-minded will interpret Brett’s irreverence as blasphemy. They will claim that the artist travesties Mahlangu - a hero who laid down his life for the freedom of his people.

The Party vs the people by Brett Murray This is simplistic and Brett’s strategy is wholly licit. The ANC appropriated the struggle, and exploited it as part of its legitimizing mythology. As the party has ceased to honor the struggle ideals of equality and social justice, it and its propaganda are now fair game. Brett doctors the posters to underline how the ANC betrayed both its principles and those of the heroes who died for them.

The work is tongue-in-cheek, and only the inveterately superficial could imagine it profanes the memory of the sacred ANC martyrology.

However sending up struggle heroes to emphasize how the ANC betrayed them, is a perilous course, and when Brett’s frontal assault is unredeemed by wit, the work falls flat. In the panel inscribed “Steve ‘Kick-back King’ Biko”, Chris ‘Hush Money’ Hani, Oliver ‘On the Take’ Tambo, etc”, the humor peters out in sophomoric one-liners that seem shallow, forced, unfunny, and gratuitously insulting.

Also on exhibition are two very impressive bronze sculptures, ‘The Party vs The People’ and ‘One Party State’ that do not belong on this exhibition as their style is completely different to the rest of the exhibits.

They indicate the harmless formal direction Brett’s art could have taken. This would have pleased everyone, as opposed to his politicized works which often do the reverse. To celebrate your country is to endorse the status quo, to criticize it is to emphasize the need for positive change, and judged by that criterion, Brett Murray is a great patriot as well as a devastatingly effective satirist.

My opinion however is not universally shared. At the opening on Saturday the 20th many gallery-goers were outraged, and complained bitterly to the gallery staff. Further faecal matter will surely hit the fan. Earlier this year the then Minister of Arts and Culture, Lulu Xingwana demanded to know why Zanele Muholi’s controversial exhibition examining black lesbianism, had not been censored.

I suspect that Brett is playing the agent provocateur and deliberately throwing down the gauntlet at Xingwana’s successor, Pallo Jordan, and challenging him to close the exhibition, or remove certain works, in order to prove that the freedom of the artist, and by extension that of every citizen, is in jeopardy.

Brett is playing a dangerous game to defend our civil liberties and one can only applaud the artist’s courage and shout ‘Viva Brett!” and ‘Bravo, Bravo, Bravo!’

Posted By: Maggie Otieno

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