South Africa: Collectors All Aboard for Surf Safety

Surf boards decorated by some of South Africa's most famous artists fetched R83 500 when they were sold on auction in Cape Town on Friday night. Among those who decorated the 70s-style retro boards made by legendary surfboard shaper Spider Murphy, are Konradski, Varenka Paschke, Brett Murray, Cameron Platter, Richard Scott, Julia Rose Clarke and Angela Macpherson.
 
A total of 13 boards were offered for auction, but only nine were sold on the night. The artists used a variety of mediums to decorate the boards, including oil, spray paint, ball point pen, humour and naughtiness and even a men's suit "reinvented" by Angela Macpherson.

All the proceeds of the auction, part of the annual Wavescapes Surf Film Festival, will be donated to the National Sea Rescue Institute's Cape Town Shark Spotters programme. The programme utilises previously unemployed men operating from mountainside vantage points above popular beaches as an early-warning shark-spotting system.

Festival organiser Steve Pike said that many of the successful bidders were not surfers, but had bought the boards for their artistic value.

Read the full article by Nathalie Rosa Bucher at allAfrica.com