Arts on Main really put itself on the map in September when Joburg’s beautiful people headed to the unexplored side of the CBD to take in SA Fashion Week there.
This complex has since burgeoned into one of the hippest spots in town, harking back to New York City’s SoHo district development in the 1960s, similarly inviting artists in many different disciplines to breathe life into the old bricks and concrete.
Getting there still means running the gauntlet of Joe Slovo Drive, or Main Street in town, but as you get to End Street, an oasis of cool, cutting-edge chic envelops you as you head into a courtyard with olive and lemon trees, surrounded by exhibition spaces that have been artfully coaxed out of their industrial past and reinvented as vaults of creativity.
A huge contribution to the Joburg regeneration drive, Arts on Main is still a work in progress, with a string of old buildings gradually being linked up in what’s called the Maboneng Precinct.
The hub of the precinct is the converted early-1900s offices and warehouse of DF Corlett Construction, now housing the large exhibition space where SA Fashion Week took place, and artists and galleries including William Kentridge, David Krut Publishing, Kim Lieberman, Jozi art:lab, Black Coffee, Love Jozi, and exhibition spaces for the Goodman Gallery and the Goethe-Institut.
The courtyard restaurant, Canteen, is a natural gathering spot for the creatives in residence, but down the road, past the new independent cinema house, The Bioscope, and the Chalkboard Café – which adjoins Arts on Main along Fox Street – is the newly opened Pata Pata, a jazzier, more leisurely venue, hosting live bands at weekends.
A focal building in the Maboneng Precinct is Main Street Life, a seven- storey mixed-use block converted from a 1970s sports clothing factory. It combines creative workshop, exhibition and events spaces with studio apartments and a top-floor art hotel called 12 Decades.
The hotel traces the history of Joburg with suites conceptualised by artists. The vaudeville-like “Who is Herbert Dlomo?” suite, designed by Lauren Wallett, features velvet drapery and a bed on stilts with a small ladder next to it to climb in, while Kim Stern’s “House that Jack built” is replete with gold artefacts in bric-a-brac cabinets. Hotel rooms cost about R650 a night.
Around the corner is another Maboneng project, Revolution House, previously a hijacked building and now an indoor skate park with walls decorated by Rasty, the graffiti artist. It will become a skate-art-music space, where bands can rehearse and appointed artists can ply their trade, among them a tattoo artist.
The visionaries behind it are property developer Jonathan Liebmann and architect Enrico Daffonchio, their idea being to create a safe, mixed-use inner-city area that attracts not only artists, but also the people who live in the area and the middle- to upper-income groups who live beyond the CBD.
Capitalising on its evident success, the Maboneng Precinct is set to expand this year with the development of more buildings dedicated to entertainment venues and retail, as well as offices, networking spaces and a museum of African design.
Among them will be The Main Change (office space), Fox Street Studios (more residential flats) and a five-storey parkade, Off the Grid.
Meanwhile, Market on Main, a Sunday public market selling local, natural and organic products, opened at the end of last month and has already proved a great drawcard for Arts on Main, and an ideal regular occasion for Joburg’s arts community to mingle and share.
Suffice to say that Newtown, which has long laid claim to being Joburg’s cultural hub, is finally getting a run for its money.
l Visit www.artsonmain.co.za, marketonmain.co.za, or mainstreetlife.co.za - The Star