Love in a loveless time
Brett Charles Seiler x Billy Monk Collection
04.03.2020
“Monk was able to capture the lives of people redeemed from apartheid’s scrutiny, for in these hidden worlds no one cared about status, caste, sexual preference. One senses too that Monk’s subjects knew and trusted him, for with him they could be themselves.”
– Ashraf Jamal, ‘Love in a Loveless Time’, Text, 2013
Borrowing the title from Ashraf Jamal’s essay on Billy Monk, Love in a Loveless Time is a collaborative exhibition pairing Monk’s graphic and revealing black and white photographs with Brett Charles Seiler’s monochromatic multimedia artworks. This unique exhibition sees Seiler selecting a series of Monk’s photographs and responding to them in his characteristic style. Both artists’ works reveal narratives and scenes that epitomize disobedience and quiet protest, particularly with matters of sexuality, oppression of marginalized communities and social norms. Yet these ‘quiet protests’ arise from a genuine place in both Monk and Seiler, from honest portrayals of the subcultures they themselves inhabit, not simply to prove a point or to create shock. Through remarkably similar iconography, raw personal encounters and extraordinary closeness with their subjects, both artists break down facades put in place by conservative, normative society and confront the viewer with scenes that they deem no longer necessary to be labeled as ‘fringe’ or ‘underground’. Both artists capture the worlds in which they belong, although half a century apart, and prove that there is indeed love (and heartbreak) in loveless times.
BILLY MONK
Billy Monk was a bouncer and photographer in underground nightclubs in dockside Cape Town in the late ‘60s. Underground in both senses of the word, these clubs, such as The Catacombs, allowed revelers of all creeds, colours and sexual orientations to party in unbridled joy. Above ground, apartheid was in full force and District Six, minutes away from the club, was being torn apart and races divided. Many of the marginalised communities, particularly the LGBTQI and dockside prostitutes (sugar girls), who congregated inside the club, would have been arrested outside this safe bubble. But this enticing ‘danger’ and edginess that the dark and dingy spot exuded also attracted the wealthy Southern Suburbs-set, eager to ‘slum it’ for the night. To witness the ‘bizarre’, safe in the knowledge that what they saw (or did) remained there.
Monk's position as bouncer afforded him a special closeness with the patrons, allowing candid and revealing images of these subcultures, as well as the privileged few in their finest gear. Transgenders, homosexuals, mixed-race couples, sugar girls and foreign sailors and even rebellious teens. They were all captured by Billy Monk’s lens and frozen in time in the graphic, stark camera-flash that allowed nothing and no one to hide. As David Goldblatt says: “This was no foreigner coming in and invading their space and their premises. He was one of them.” He was sympathetic and sensitive and very much a part of this special scene so unique in South Africa’s history. His photographs reflect this sensitivity and honesty.
Sadly Monk never got to see his work displayed on any gallery walls. After a decade spent diamond diving on the west coast of South Africa, his box of negatives was rediscovered by Jac de Villiers. An exhibition was staged at the Market Gallery in Johannesburg in 1982 but en route to attend his show, Billy Monk was tragically shot and killed. His images live on though, providing a rare glimpse into this little-known slice of Cape Town's history.
BRETT CHARLES SEILER
Brett Charles Seiler, b.1994, Zimbabwe. Works and lives in Cape Town South Africa. Graduated from The Ruth Prowse School of Art in 2015. Solo exhibitions include Macho Man, Tell It To My Heart, 2016 at AVA, Cape Town and More Scared Of What Was In My Closet Than What Was Underneath My Bed, 2018 at CIRCA Gallery, Cape Town. Seiler has also been included in various group exhibitions including a performance piece with Luvuyo Nyawose titled Reading Homophobia, 2017, at A4 Foundation curated by Kemang Wa Lehulere and Zipho Dayile.
Seiler’s work takes the forms of painting and installations. The use of text and language is critical for Seiler work, often poetic, religious and sediments like a confessional. Dealing with ideas of romantic gestures and sexual interactions, Seiler works dives into historical gay modes of communication and conduct. Bringing forward a collective memory of gay rights movements and focusing on the sexual oppression of gay men. This draws in feelings of longing, distance and nostalgia.
Seiler work is often accompanied by performance-based works, process works and interventions. Works that ‘queer’ the gallery space, including writings and imagery directly on the walls of the gallery - as a revolt or disobedience. Being from Zimbabwe, Seiler’s work is also highly recognized for questioning gay rights and the current facade highlighting punishment, education, media and the institution
