Tread lightly on this earth: “Gaia”, an exhibition at the Jack Ginsberg Centre for Book Arts, Wits Art Museum until 13th December 2025

Accolades and feedback from international visitors

An exhibition of artists’ book NOT to be missed. It’s at the relatively unknown Jack Ginsberg Centre for Book Arts at Wits Art Museum. I took some U.S. guests staying at Liz  at Lancaster to visit this exhibition recently. They were blown away. Other American guests told Jack Ginsberg that if this exhibition was in New York, tickets would be sold out.

Caveats and Apologies

Before we even begin. This is an extra long post. I was asked by David Paton (one of the curators of Gaia) to write a more in-depth review as compared to my usual blog posts. I said quite openly that I was not sure that I was the right person to do this. I don’t write with eloquence, or poetically, or with ground-breaking intellectual insights. I write with often very prosaic clarity as I try to make sense of complex issues for myself and for others: and while I hope my writing is always underpinned by that bit of a bogey concept … “THEORY” … I hope this is always applied in a meaningful, helpful and often overtly but yet invisible way (if that makes sense). So I resisted for a very short while (rubber arms and all that), and then, having seen a small section of the exhibition, I was hooked. I took it as an honour and a privilege to be asked and to attempt to provide some mapping of this extraordinary exhibition. I write below with what I hope is clarity and usefulness, while also conveying some of my wonder and passion for these extraordinary books and artistic creations; for the dedication, skill, and sheer grit of these artists; for Jack Ginsberg’s philanthropic donation to Wits; for Rosalind Cleaver’s ethos, integrity and commitment to her love of nature and art; to the curators David Paton and Ciara Struwig for the remarkable curatorial miracle. And for having had the privilege of the training and then teaching for some 30 years in art history, that most amazing of inter-disciplinary disciplines.

The book and the page

Who remembers Eric Carle’s timeless classic, The Very Hungry Caterpillar?  Wonder, transformation, microcosm within macrocosm (“a little egg on a leaf in the light of the moon”), the passing of time (the hungry little crawler ate something different every day of the week), the scale of his diet felt in haptic veracity (the pages getting bigger as his food intake increases). And no child will forget the tactility of exploring, with small enquiring fingers, those cavities of food bites. And every parent and grandparent who has read Carle’s enchanting classic, will remember nostalgically their exact tone of voice when it comes to the wondrous ending: “and .. he was a … beautiful butterfly”. (And please Universe, this child is now, at this stage, showing signs of sleep!)

Hidden Treasures

If you want an immersive experience of all these emotions and responses writ large, you MUST (imperative voice here), visit the current exhibition at the Jack Ginsberg Centre for Book Arts on the 2^nd floor of the Wits Art Museum [WAM].  (An aside and caveat: getting into WAM needs grit and determination. Plus a bulldozer might help but that is neither entirely helpful nor legal. For AT LEAST the last FOUR months the JRA [Johannesburg Roads Agency] has been digging up the road and pavement/sidewalk in Bertha Street (the west-east access road directly outside WAM’s entrance) as well as Jan Smuts Ave (the north-south access).  But there are several other options for close and easy parking so check at the end of this post. And of course, Uber is the best option.

Two exhibitions in one visit

Interestingly to find the inaccessible secret hideaway of the JGCBA on the 2^nd floor of the Wits Art Museum, tucked away at the back of the museum  through what seems like a service door, and then in a lift to the 2nd floor, you pass through the main WAM space where Serge Nitegeka’s exhibition is on view. CLOSED 8th NOVEMBER

The scale and mode of viewing of Serge’s large paintings and huge installation as compared to the works in the Centre for Book Arts, epitomize polarities of viewing experience. Nitegeka’s work requires contrasting experiences of overview and distance but also bodily engagement and immersion – like Renaissance chapels and Baroque ceiling decorations. The books upstairs require the “absorptive mode” of Medieval manuscripts – intimate peering, close examination, a scaling down of one’s own Brobdingnagian proportions. And often a primal resonance of childhood – with the miniature scale of dolls’ houses, dinky cars, toy soldiers, printers’ trays and Barbie accessories … choose you age-appropriate childhood item!

Gaia: a tribute to Rosalind Cleaver

We have to thank Jack Ginsberg for the extraordinary artists’ book collection at the JGCBA.  There are many major international libraries and museums who collect artists’ books. These include the International Artist’s Book Triennial, Smithsonion Institute, MOMA, The New York Metropolitan, Harvard University Library,  National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA),  the V&A, the British Library, the Bodleian,  Bavarian State Library to name but a few. The Jack Ginsberg Centre for Book Arts is unique however, (certainly in North America and Europe), in having a dedicated Centre with rolling exhibitions of the items in the collection. And we need to thank Rosalind Cleaver for sowing the seeds of the current exhibition, Gaia.  Ros was the senior librarian of this collection from 2019 until her sad passing in late 2024,  and the exhibition is very much in her memory.  In his speech at the exhibition opening, Jack spoke not only about his close friendship with this remarkable woman, but also how Ros had helped Jack turn his home-housed collection (when it was the largest private artists’ books collection in the world) into a public archive at WAM.  It took over three months for the two of them to transport over 12,000 books in their cars (loose to avoid the time and cost of wrapping) to Wits.  Jack in the foreword to the exhibition catalogue gives more history of the development of the Centre for Book Arts and of Ros’ role in creating the space and developing the cataloguing system. With her deep and enduring passion for the natural world and the notion of interconnectedness of all things living and non-living, it is entirely fitting that several of Ros’ books and artworks are included in this exhibition. Her presence, ethos, care and commitment is profoundly felt and celebrated in this exhibition.

Gaia: Dialogues between the book arts, natural sciences and plant humanities

The skeleton framework: 4 collections

The artists’ books on display speak about the natural world and our place within it as stewards of a fragile interconnected system in the face of climate change.  They embody Ros’ ethos of being mindful and respectful of nature and to use resources sustainably. The curators, David Paton and Ciara Struwig, have added to Rosalind’s initial selection of books with further books from the collection, as well as books and art works by Rosalind herself. And in a departure from previous exhibitions, themes and topics have been expanded and interconnected in cross-disciplinary conversations, with material displays from the Wits collections held at C.E. Moss Herbarium, and the Life Sciences Museum.  Hence the subtitle of the exhibition: dialogues between the book arts, natural sciences and plant humanities.

The exhibition comprises 149 works in all: 105 books, 30 art works, and 14 natural science materials, posters and herbarium sheets.  So the skeletal framework is comprised of exhibits from four sources:

• Jack Ginsberg’s Artists’ Books Collection
• Natural Sciences collections
• Ros Cleaver’s own production
• and works by a few selected artists whose works speak about the natural world.

Curatorial Strategy 
Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Develop your senses – especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else. 
– Leonardo da Vinci (quoted by Ciara Struwig in her catalogue essay p2)

In thinking about a framework to present the varied body of material, the curators began to think about the idea of ecosystems or biomes i.e. large geographical areas (like a forest, a desert, grasslands) where the climate, soil, plants, and animals begin to shape one another over time. I love the description of a biome as a “big nature neighbourhood”.  At a conceptual level it offers a way of thinking about how “creative, scientific and cultural practices intersect”.  These 4 “cultural biomes” are:

• Fauna (in the long glass case on the right wall as you enter)
• Flora (on the opposite wall)
• the Anthropocene (in the case immediately behind on your left as you enter)
• and Landscape and Minerals (on the back wall opposite the entrance)

Art and science: both facets of curiosity

The first work in the glass case in the Fauna section, by Molly Van Nice 1996 entitled Notes for the Thoroughly Natural History, comments on art and science as intersecting but differing ways of making meaning and understanding our world. She writes:
To me, art is just a facet of curiosity. Like its uptown cousin, science, it is simply one form of inquiry, a way of looking at things, asking questions and nosing around. Unlike science, whose conclusions are taken as fact, the conclusions of art – the objects themselves – are not answers; they are matters of opinion, inklings. Postcards home, nothing more.

Art as science: herbariums and botanical drawings

Collecting as a hobby: Cabinets of curiosities or the WunderCabinet

Cabinets of curiosities or WunderKammers (the term “cabinet” originally applied to a room rather than to a piece of furniture) date back to the 16^th. These were encyclopaedic collections of objects which ignored all boundaries of category. Rather, as the name suggests, they consciously delighted in the excessive abundance and random disconnected juxtaposition of the bizarre, the weird, the exotic and the unusual.

And it is this theme that Claudia Cohen and Barbara Hodgson take up in their completely breathtaking WunderCabinet 2011, a work which demands a separate post all on its own.  Claudia Cohen is a professional bookbinder working for major artists and international institutions, while Barbara focuses on the design, typography, and writing.  They take a year to research and make a book. When you see the display of the book, its box and objects you will understand why. The work in the Ginsberg Collection comprises one in a variable edition of 36 and is particularly special as it is one of the 10 deluxe issues which includes 2 drawers filled with various marvellous curiosities which have been sourced from Cohen and Hodgson’s own collections. It is called a variable edition as, although each object is simliar, they are not identical. Each of the 24 odd objects is recorded, researched and catalogued in an accompanying handwritten catalogue which is specific to each deluxe edition.  The box housing this book is decorated with exquisite intricate marquetry designs.

Cohen and Hodgson divide their book cabinet into the two common Wunderkammer divisions: Naturalia (eg. fossilized shark teeth, seashells, seed pods, a silkworm cocoon) and Artificialia (optical lenses, glass eyeballs, a watch face, a microscope slide of a skeletonized magnolia leaf fragment, a cast of the finger of Princess Dashkov, a six-panel tunnel book of a 1599 Italian curiosity cabinet). How randomly mad is this collection of objects ? And it is in studying the 16th century image and the small pop-down book made for the WunderCabinet, (see below), that one gains some sense of the meticulous research and laborious intricate work that goes into each edition of Cohen and Hodgson’s “annual” creations. As each edition is so limited, and as there is fierce competition from and between major international institutions to buy these works for their collections, few in South Africa realize just how privileged we are to have so many of these books in South Africa, in Johannesburg, at Wits. Thank you Jack for your generosity, your vision and MOST of all for your passion for artists’ books.

Anthropocene Biome and Calls to Action

There are several books which take a more active approach to humankind’s relationship to nature by speaking to the dangers of climate change or critiquing our destructive role in nature and contribution to habitat loss which further threatens endangered species.

A call to preserve biodiversity

A call to use natural resources sustainably

A shout-out for handmade

Eugene Hon’s extraordinary display of image and books in the back right  corner of the exhibition, draws on a relationship to the natural world with a somewhat different call to action – in this case to celebrate the role of artistic creativity whilst also celebrating values of the handmade, technical skill and close observation of the natural world.

The label below explains the

:

Homo Sapiens: our effect on the planet is disproportionate to our time on it

Humankind’s ultimate insignificance as a species when seen in the relation to the evolutionary history of life, is powerfully rendered by On Kawara in his astonishing work One Million Years.  Humankind’s short life as a species, a miniscule speck in the context of cosmic time, throws into even sharper focus, our current destructive impact on earth and nature as expressed by many artists on the exhibition (Cleaver’s works above being a mere 2 examples).

In each of the 2 volumes of One Million Years, year dates are printed in chronological order in 5 blocks down each page. Each of these 5 blocks has 10 rows of 10 columns, so each block has a century of year dates making 1000 years on each double page.  The first book Past (the top book in the image above) is dedicated to “all those who have lived and died” and covers the years 998,031 BC to 1969 BCE while the second book entitled Future, dedicated to “the last one”, begins at 1969 and ends with the year 1,001,992.  In the current exhibition, the book at the bottom of the photograph is opened on the pages which show the dates 2001 – 3000.  This means that our current year, 2025, is included on line 3 of page 2 of 2001 pages, which sure puts us in our place in this vast magnitude of time. Particularly, considering that Homo Sapiens emerged some 300,000 years ago. The 22 missing years between the two books ie 1970 to 1992, indicate the years during which Kawara conceptualized and produced the work.  Another sobering period of time, for slightly different reasons!

The fourth biome: Landscape and Minerals

Here works include artists’ landscape renderings as well as Alec Finlay’s Wind Blown Clouds 2005 published by Rizolli International Publications; Simon Faithfull’s Ice Blink an Antarctic Essay 2006 published by Bookworks: and the enchanting work by Nancy Ruth Leavitt: Snowgarden 2007

In Snowgarden, Leavitt’s collection of texts takes the reader from the first cold wintry wind of winter to the much anticipated Snowdrop of spring, using colour in changing sky colour in the top quarter of the page and in the text – from grey winter to the vivid green lettering of SnowDrops – to evoke the changing seasons and passage of time.

Layers and connections between art, life sciences and the natural world

Another caveat .. below are but a few random example mentioned.

• The most overt connections are made with the curatorial juxtaposition of museum science exhibits with artists’ works of similar themes: e.g. Tatanja Bergelt’s Pas De Deux 1996 #7/22 and Betty R. Sweren Butterfly 1991 #7/18 alongside boxes of butterflies from the Feltham collection in the Wits Life Sciences Museum Collection; Colleen Winter’s Crow’s First Book of Beetles alongside Dung Beetles also from Wits Life Sciences Museum

And books abound made by artists who

• make their own paper out of plant material (Peter and Donna Thomas’ Paper from Plants 1999 #15/150) or other natural substance (Richard Long’s Mud Hand Prints 1984 one of 100 copies; sand in Tina Flau’s Sandbuch 2005 unique)
• draw on the conventions of herbarium sheets (Enid Mark Art Botanica A collection of Poems 2004 AP/40; and, in the case of Cohen and Hodgson’s Paper Botanists Cultivators of Artifice 2021 #25/30, incorporate actual herbarium sheets)
• mimic the style of natural history texts (Carol Schwartzott’s Beyond Ichthyology The Fine Art of Fish Illustration 2005 #2/10)
• collaborate with entymologists (the wood-engraver Gayford Schanilec and entomologist Clarke Garry in Mayflies of the Driftless Region 2005 #25/50 of 400 copies; or with birdwatchers John Ross in Birds of Manhattan 1998 #30/40)
• include the trace of actual insects and plants (Ryoko Adachi Hole From my Beanstalk 2008 #9/20; Kathleen Sawyer Necrophagus 2013 unique; Runa Thorkelsdóttir Sunset 2007#36; Leda Black Twenty-Six Leaves of one Tree 1999 #13/50)
• draw on plants as metaphors of erotica (Judith Rothschild’s Fig 2001 #4/48; Jim Dine Temple of Flora 1984 one of 75)

Entrance and Back Wall: Tread lightly on the earth

Ros Cleaver’s voice, hand, eye and intellect are present throughout this exhibition. Not only was she involved in the design of the Centre itself when it was first developed but, as mentioned before, she had already started selecting works to fulfil her envisioning of an exhibition which would focus on the natural world.

“This exhibition is curated in her spirit – gentle, insightful, reverent – through the lens of her deep love and empathy for the natural world.”

From the Cleaver and Strustarich family tribute included in the exhibition catalogue (p12).

Given this, it is fitting that it is Rosalind Cleaver’s Museum Cabinet which stands at the exhibition entrance and introduces so many of the exhibition’s themes and cross-overs between art, nature and scientific studies.  And that the back wall has been wall-papered with an enlarged section of Rosalind’s artist’s book Alien Invaders.  These two works stand like proud bookends, containing and framing this jewel of an exhibition with its mad but wondrous mixture of different objects, books, pages, styles, mediums, materials and disciplines.

Museum Cabinet is exactly what it says it is. A replica of an old fashioned wooden cabinet with 8 drawers – fully made by the artist.

The images above show:

• On the left, the brass pull file label handle, with the common name as well as the scientific name of the bird. The number refers to the particular bird in the table of  birds on the Birds4Africa website. 
• The middle image shows, on the bottom of the drawer, a digital print of repeated images of the labelled South African bird (with a detail on the right)
• On top of this digital print is a perspex sheet on which evocative bird outlines are drawn in white ink
• Small holes are made in the perspex sheet
• Labels with information from the Transvaal Museum’s Red List (a list of endangered species) is printed on Museum labels. The cotton/string is then pulled through the small hole so that the labels lie on the top of the perspex sheet mimicing the way items are archived in a natural history museum

In a second set of labels the artist has chosen lines from authors and poets which refer to the wonder of the natural world.

The entire installation uses the language of scientific museum display but with creative artistic interventions, both of which speak to endangered species and the fragility of  threatened eco-systems which leads to species extinction.

Curatorial challenges

One of the most obvious challenges is how to display objects which are often three-dimensional and are meant to be experienced with all our senses. As viewers we want to feel the texture of the paper, turn the pages, experience the holding of a precious object, understand the logic of shapes and cut-outs, zoom in with close focus on details. But we have that barrier of glass protecting these fragile artworks; entirely necessary but which frustrates and teases our full aesthetic and haptic experience.  Just one example, I would love to feel the “flipping, slipping and shuddering of Die Forelle‘s pages (made of lamintated cardboard strips) re-creating the trout in the brook.” Exhibition Catalogue p55.

Another challenge would have been to fit the curatorial logic of the four biomes into the practical and physical constraints of the space and the cabinets. Some works have clearly nudged their way into slightly different spaces.  The inclusion of Louise Genet’s Nautilus Book 1998 in the case dedicated to Cohen and Hodgson’s WunderCabinet, did prompt me to ask David Paton “Why?”. While his first answer was that the juxatposition encouraged questions (like mine) and so dialogue, his second answer was more convincing!! That it was an entirely pragmatic choice as the case was the only one high enough near the Fauna Section which could fit The Nautilus! 

In conversation with Jack Ginsberg at an exhibition walkabout, Jack spoke about the uniqueness of the display cases at the Centre. The long vitrines have been specifically  constructed without any  interrupting upright support posts so enabling curators to open up large-scale books and leporellos (fold-out accordian books) in the cabinets.

Talking of leporellos and accordian books, I would have liked some kind of overview of the technical/descriptive terms used in the exhibition labels and in the exhibition catalogue.   While some are obvious like pop-up, pop-down, accordian, tunnel, shaped, etc, terms like a unique book as opposed to an artist’s book, a variable edition as opposed to a variant, an edition versus a copy,  are more subtle and complex.  And drawing attention to the way the images/text was made in its first iteration through additional (optional of course!) information, would provide added focus and enrich the viewer experience.

Housekeeping – forewarned is forearmed

To matters totally mundane … Best choice to get there … Uber!  And ask the driver to drop you in Bertha Street (one way west to east) at the corner of Jan Smuts Ave.

• Once inside there is a somewhat confusingly unpreposessing unwelcoming empty space with Security on your right. Do not doubt yourself, this is the right space but here is your next hurdle.
• Security staff apparently rotate and change and are not informed of either the existence or location of the Centre for the Book Arts and will look at you completely blankly. Ask to see the exhibition in the WAM gallery. Hand in any big carry bag, get the locker key, sign in and Security will open the glass doors to let you into Gallery.
• There you will hopefully find the wonderful Vuyiswa sitting at the reception desk at the back of the entrance gallery. She will for sure shepherd you from there …
• Through the main gallery to what looks like a service door, into a back area, up in a lift to second floor and then turn right as you get out of the lift

and as you walk into the Centre for Book Arts you will KNOW this has all been worth it! Your cocoon has turned into a wondrous butterfly.

If you are Ubering after the end of the exhibition, remain inside next to Security and do not stand in the street while checking your cell phone for your driver.  There are opportunistic cell phone snatchings. Apart from that it is COMPLETELY safe. The most dangerous thing is to avoid tripping on the uneven sidewalk surface and incomplete roadworks!

I never Uber but drive there and usually park in Station Road. I have nearly always found parking there. Get on to the east-to-west one way of De Korte and turn right up Station Street near the corner of Bertha Street. That is where I find parking.

You can also phone for parking in the WAM basement.  WAM number 011 717 1365 (Closed Sunday and Monday) and they will direct you to the JGCBA on the 2nd floor. Curator David Paton is there on Thursday and Friday  011 559 1118 or 011 559 1117. Or otherwise try Ciara Struwig on 011-717-1448 and 011-717-1455.
The catalogue can be purchased at the exhibition for R500.

The Next Walkabout

It seems the next walkbaout will be conducted by the Life Sciences Disciplines so this will give a completely different, but equally important and totally fascinating entry point into this groundbreaking exhibition. I will update this blog when I get further details.