A day in the life ~ Victoria Yards

 

Excuse moi? I'm trying to find my way to the ArtyBollocks! exhibition . . .

Take a badly depressed area seemingly with nowhere to go. Look around at it, and what are you likely to see? Nothing neat and clean like the little one up there showing me the way ~ More likely ruined pavements, yes almost certainly. Garbage piled up, overflowing into sewers and running across pavements. The primordial sight and smell of the homeless who have no access to sanitation and create nests and nooks in any space that provides a smidgeon of cover. The people who prey on them, and in the absence of policing, are now the landlords of whatever they seize. The few remnants of society who, through obstinacy or need have remained or migrated and are clinging on behind barriers of rusting barbed wire and burglar bars. Everywhere, overgrown grass, weeds and the remnants of abandoned gardens. That's what you'd expect.

What would it likely have going for it? Nowhere to go but up, for one. The prospect of inexpensive land with the potential of services that can be upgraded. The hope crime can be brought under control. The goodwill of the community to welcome it, if that can be gained. Maybe something can be seeded. Which is one reason why I’m travelling south to old haunts this Sunday morning. Besides, there's a touch of nostalgia.

So all of those thoughts, and more, were going through my mind as I dropped out of Hillbrow and travelled through Bertrams before swinging right down towards Lorentzville where a patch of the area near Ellis Park has been carved out for urban renewal and possible gentrification. I used to live in Bertrams when my folks first moved out of the ‘Brow to start a real home for our little family: Free Staters migrating to the big city to make a life.

The apartment block we used to inhabit is decayed, and as I drove past a mental feeling of what it was re-surfaced. Different now. Homies and their piles under the bridge, the garbage, broken sanitation and pavements, tough looking kids and the barriers their parents erect to keep crime at bay ~ all there. What else would I find? On that other side of the coin?

On Sundays it’s easy to find the Yards. The lack of parking signposts it. The pavements are incongruously taken up with late model cars leaving a little walking strip for their occupants streaming down towards entrances. Everywhere parking jockeys with Hi-Viz vests. Hmm. Good thing I know the area. I can inch through and find a spot near the Old Synagogue while everyone else mills around the immediate side streets. Up the rise, swing left and into a lovely empty side road, and there it is, the Old Synagogue.

Deserted now, but not quite abandoned yet. An electric fence keeps the vandals out, the powder blue paint is faded and the magnificent wooden doors sun-bleached and in desperate need of varnishing. Commissioned in ’26, nearly a century ago, its race has run. This area used to have a thriving little Jewish community, now an enormous mosque dominates at the end of the same street. Where there’s a place of worship, that’s generally the roots for community. In its own way, that’s a good sign.

I lock the car and make my way down to the Yards, picking my way past piles of garbage and taking in the sights and sounds of Sunday community. There’s a little stream along whose banks we wild kids used to forage. It’s been fenced off in order to let the water flow freely and uncontaminated. That’s another good sign. From the window of a car the fencing looks forbidding.

Up close and looking through it’s a different story. It’s also the boundary of the Yards, so I know I’m close now.

I’m here to see the ArtyBollocks exhibition, which is a fun concept with a darker underbelly. It’s in one of the converted properties making up the Yards, and I’m also hoping to meet up with one of the artists whose work I enjoy and persuade her to take a coffee & chat about her entry and the that of the other artists, and how well the idea has been realised.

After that I’m intending to roam around and see how an abandoned industrial estate is being transformed into a budding site for entrepreneurs: Artists (of course, they are always the first!) printers, manufacturers of this and that, foodies, studios and so on and so forth.

An immediate win! The gallery is right there by the southern entrance! It’s mid-day though and most people have decamped to the Food quadrant leaving the space largely empty. This is great for gallery viewing, but sadly the hoped for chat isn’t going to happen.

Anyways, I could move about the space as though I owned it (and of course did!) It also gave me the time to pause and detach the 3rd paragraph of the bollocks (which went to "intent") and see how close the artists came to mirroring it back thematically (you see how easily we start talking that way!); & that was REALLY interesting. Some of the artists seem to have treated it ironically/playfully, and others had taken the challenge head-on ~ a much more difficult exercise. I had a half hour or so of uninterrupted viewing in which to reflect on the more (to me!) interesting works. I also enjoyed the curator's role, sometimes placing artists work tightly bound and others letting works from different artists interact.

Right! Time to explore a bit, a slow walk around the studios and buildings, lurking in the background and watching as people looked over wares and haggled. The studios are often both the workplace and the sales point. When it works this works really well, and for many of the smaller enterprises this is the norm. There are three different kinds of spaces: Large barns with that typical flea market feel, small studios, and somewhat larger more retaily type spaces that felt as if the owner(s) are already well established, or have capital behind them. This gave a nice eclectic feel to the Yards.

The passageways between the buildings have been designed with the visitor in mind, with enough space to allow for an up stream and a downstream, with the space between the walkways and buildings taken up by gardens.

Gardens. That's an abiding impression I took away. The shopping and browsing and studios are definitely the key reason why anyone would visit the Yards, but there are other rewards for exploring the space. The gardens that proliferate around the buildings are both decorative and functional. Mixtures of flowers, herbs and vegetables make a great show and some of those gardens really are good enough to eat!

For the next year or so this site is a work in progress. Which means lots of empty building shells to explore, many buildings that have been cleaned and so you have an appealing "raw" feeling both inside and outside. You can look up and see people circulating and chatting in what anywhere else would be a derelict building. It's often like moving about in a surreal noir movie, but where noir has Alice-like become the norm. Beware the rabbit hole! and watch what you eat ~ one bite could make you smaller, another make you tall. Unlike, as Grace Slick sang, the pills that mother gives you, which don't do anything at all . . . Ask Alice, when you're ten feet tall!

Lots of nooks and crannies, interesting views, people popping in and out of corridors and stairwells, light cascading and fading. If you're an artist or photographer, a short lived opportunity. If you're an explorer, you can let your inner child run free. Take it all in before it becomes settled. It's like Maboneng, before it all congealed into solid spaces with defined boundaries and borders.

And the hope? what about that? The community? any clues there? Just this one, as I was exiting for the day and heading off to the Radium Beer Hall in OG. A little spaza shop selling everything from clothes to sweets and ciggies. And 2 games machines solidly taken over by the youf of the day. If we'd had them back in my day, Id've been found doing something similar.

But since I'm not, it was down to the Radium for Beer, Burger and solid Sunday Jazz.
I like the Radium, its got no airs or graces and is tolerant to all sorts. Its the kind of place that I'd take my mate Piotr to. He has Asbergers, a sort of high functioning Autism. The Radium's the kind of place where difference doesn't matter that much and mostly they leave you to get by.
Just don't mess with the Jazz . . . .

Images all (c) Author (all rights reserved) Apr 07, 2019