The Cape Town book launch of Bruce Murray Arnott: Into the Megatext, took place on Thursday evening 20th July, 2023, at the Irma Stern Museum, UCT. It was a lovely intimate gathering of about 50 people in Irma Stern’s lounge, surrounded by her powerful paintings. All the contributing authors who are in the country were present. The publisher, Robin Stuart-Clark from Print Matters Heritage and his team, as well as past colleagues and past students of Bruce’s from Michaelis, my colleagues from CPUT, friends and family attended the event. It was a gathering of people who came to celebrate Bruce as a person and particularly his lifelong multifaceted creative career in the visual arts.
A conversation took place between three of the contributing authors, Kim Gurney, Ashraf Jamal and Sven Christian. The discussion, which was led by Sven, who is also the co-editor of the book with me, was engrossing and insightful. It revealed aspects about Bruce’s creative legacy that many people were not aware of, as he had kept a low profile as an artist. He believed that his artwork should speak for itself and that layers of meaning would reveal themselves in response to the viewer’s engagement with his public works, personal sculptures, drawings and prints.
MARI LECANIDES-ARNOTT
26 July 2023