A Playce at Art Fair

The fourth edition of RMB Latitudes returned to Shepstone Gardens under the theme "Oasis of Contemporary Art". The venue itself is striking; a collection of five properties on a rocky Johannesburg ridge, built over a century ago for the chief engineer of the Modderfontein Dynamite Factory and expanded significantly after Chris Rayner purchased and renovated it in 1981. Stone buildings, clearly referencing European masonry, manicured gardens, and winding pathways create an atmosphere that deliberately distances itself in style, attitude and inspiration from the bustle of the cultural hodgepodge (characteristic of JHB), Louis Botha Avenue below.

That distance, however, cuts both ways. The fair positions itself as an "immersive alternative to conventional art fair formats" and a "leading platform for contemporary art" yet its deeply European architectural sensibility sits in quiet tension with its stated commitment to the African diaspora. Many visiting artists have noticed and commented on this irony.

At its core, the fair is a commercial enterprise, and it shows. Access to "meaningful engagement with art" comes with a price tag, and the emphasis on selling is unmistakable throughout.

The Playce activity zine, map and sticker sheet

A focus on Ceramics with a hint of Play

What I didn't anticipate was the strong focus on ceramics, or the inclusion of an interactive game called Playce by Shade Community. Shade described the game as “claiming agency of space through play, draws from a network of artists, youth programmes and archives from Shade’s ecosystem intersecting waste, youth and art”. Their booth had the feel of a workshop: linocutting tools and a printmaking station, found objects, and a peculiar tent layered with repeated symbolism.

Playce was designed for the art fair and encourages audiences to walk through the venue, while completing tasks and sticking stickers into an activity zine; “allowing attendees to go beyond looking and into feeling, hearing, touching and making”. The game was surprisingly complex, and during the busy VIP evening, it felt more like I became part of a performance as the other guests wondered why I was lighting a candle in a shrine full of offerings. The activities, designed for the site, were very prescriptive, leaving little room for personal interpretation. A drawing of a coral tree where you have to draw the blooms with red crayon, a blank block where you have to draw a chandelier, a red circle with a corresponding red sticker to be stuck down once you see a “blob of blood, nose of a clown”. The length, suggested to be 3ish hours, and complexity likely deterred many visitors from engaging at all and most seemed content to browse the commercial “easy” stalls instead.

I did complete the game, apparently the first person to do so that evening. But the Shade Community booth felt physically and conceptually buried between two large commercial tents, struggling to assert itself within the broader context of the show.

Play Is Not Just for Children

The most disappointing moment came in conversation with the organiser afterwards. The fair organisers had assumed the interactive game was intended as a place where parents could leave their kids while they shopped. Like a Spur playground. 

This reflects a narrow and outdated understanding of play and interaction in general. A fast-paced, sales-oriented art fair perhaps has little incentive to interrogate its assumptions, but researchers and practitioners working at the intersection of contemporary art and audience engagement have long argued otherwise.

Play, participation, and embodied interaction are powerful tools for connecting all audiences with art and spaces in more meaningful ways. Treating them as a children's activity is not just a missed opportunity. It reveals exactly the kind of limited thinking that experiential design is trying to move beyond, and again that the fair is not interrogating contemporary art and any diaspora, but rather catering towards the purses that want to match the curtains with the carpet and their new purchase of paint on canvas.