It’s impossible to interview Lady Skollie (aka Laura Windvogel) without laughing, being completely mesmerised, and feeling a little shocked by something outrageous she says.
Skollie can turn an ordinary conversation into one where everyone around her is suddenly sipping champagne (before noon) and roaring at an undeniably funny story.
“I had him in a luxurious place where I could order a Castle Lite and fried fish right after,” she says in passing about her son’s birth. “The painting above my bed said, ‘Make every baby and day a masterpiece.’ Hello, art reference!” she adds.
And don’t think it’s just us lowly journalists who find her beguilingly over the top. Her gallery, Everard Read, recently hosted a function for sport, arts and culture minister Gayton McKenzie that happened to coincide with the launch of her new show, and we caught the artist being spun around – as if in a Viennese waltz – by the grinning minister.
Stage presence, star quality, or simply the ability to attract a crowd – call it what you will – the multi-award-winning artist has it in spades. But do not be fooled. What Skollie says might sometimes sound throwaway or theatrical, but it’s always underpinned by serious thinking, sharp intellect and unrelenting hard work.
Whether the subject of her art is the aftermath of colonialism, South Africa’s Coloured community, or sex and sexuality, her work – primarily created using ink, watercolour, crayon and woodcut printing – is as visually appealing as it is thought-provoking.
For Madi, Madi, her new Joburg solo exhibition, the 2022 Standard Bank Young Artist Award-winner turned her skill and attention to the topic of money.
Madi is the Setswana word for “money”, but it also means “blood” – and at the gallery group’s Rosebank space, these vital forces have collided.
“The whole show is about money, because that’s literally what everything is about,” Skollie says. Money is a lifeblood, but one that comes with complexities. “As South Africans, I feel like we are reaching a point where, irrespective of race, we are all one pay cheque away from things falling apart. There’s a sense of impending doom, but also the freedom you feel when you do have cash.”
It’s a topic that’s very much front of mind for the Currency team, but it’s fascinating to hear Skollie talk about this obviously universal, yet increasingly pressing, South African problem.
“I call myself erratically rich and periodically poor,” she notes, as we wander on to the issue of people trying to tell her how she should manage her own money. “I don’t even have a credit card,” she says. But despite the haphazard way that artists often earn – and the apparently endless unsolicited advice – she seems pretty prudent.
The big money
One of Skollie’s new works depicts a building engulfed in an inferno – the flames flaring up the canvas. It’s called Corporate South Africa Burning. You can see gallery visitors chuckling darkly as they read the title. Is she wishing for the inferno, or commenting on the state of business in South Africa? It’s yours to interpret, but given last week’s mire of government of national unity debacles and tariff train smashes, I’d go with the latter.
Another new piece shows a sea of figures in a worshipful state, gazing at what might look like the sun – but is actually a coin. The work is titled Reaching for the Coin. Who isn’t? But given that she designed a special edition R5 for the 2019 celebration of 25 years of democracy, it’s also strangely apt.
As Skollie observes, this desperate struggle with money isn’t new. One of her works in the show is based on a 1970s linocut by South African great Peter Clarke, titled Vandag is Daar Niks wat Goedkoop is Nie (Today, Nothing is Cheap).
In truth, money’s dichotomous sense of pressure and pleasure washes through all of this tightly curated collection – much like the blood that also inspired Skollie’s visual cues. To that end, most of the mixed-media works on Fabriano are coloured in ferrous shades of red, juxtaposed with black; they’re vital, unsettling and deeply appealing all at once. Just like the cash they’re inspired by.
‘Madi, Madi’ is on show at Everard Read Johannesburg until May 10.
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