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Gallery won't sell Mandela art
12/05/2005 22:56 - (SA)
Susan Segar
Cape Town - "Very, very confused." This was how Craig Mark, the
director
of the Mark Gallery in Umhlanga - one of the seven galleries licensed
to
sell the now controversial Mandela artworks - described himself on Thursday.
Mark was commenting in the wake of the lodging of papers in the
Johannesburg High Court, in which former president Nelson Mandela
asked
for a halt to the distribution of artworks being sold internationally
under
his name. Mark told the Witness he had stopped selling the Mandela artworks until he understood "what is
going
on".
He said he is waiting to read the court papers to ascertain for himself
what the allegations were, and to hear from Ross Calder, the man behind the Touch of
Mandela company which published the artworks.
Despite numerous efforts to get hold of him this week, Calder and his
staff
were still not taking calls from the media.
A weary-sounding Mark said his first concern was for the people who had
invested in the artworks, saying that, while he could not give numbers
of
artworks sold by his gallery, the sales of the works had been "very
successful". "I am just an agent acting on behalf of a principal," he said.
"I do
not
know what is going on. "Out of respect for Mandela, I have stopped selling the artworks until
such
time as I understand.
Meanwhile, in Cape Town, Andrew Blignaut, the owner of the Clock Tower gallery at the
V & A Waterfront, which is also licensed to sell the Madiba artworks, said
earlier this week that he would continue selling the pieces. He said he
believed the works were authentic and that he would carry on selling them
until he is told to cease trading.
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