Odd Café reinvents interior design

Playful use of culture, adaptive re-use, recycling and the championing of local art creates an intriguing and definitive look for Odd Café that gets people talking and puts Greenside’s newest eatery come art house come café on the map.

Walk in

Old meets new and is reborn at Odd Café in Greenside where green, recycled and adaptive reuse were the watchwords of the art restaurant’s décor. “Adaptive reuse puts a refreshing new tone on today’s design,” says Christina Patricios, founder of Odd Café that is situated in Greenside Johannesburg. “From Newtown to Braamfontein what we are seeing is that instead of bashing old buildings down, they are being reused, refreshed and adapted for modern use. Adaptive reuse is all about respecting and working with the old, but changing it in ways so that it is right for modern living.”

Odd Café is fast becoming a favourite on South Africa’s cultural and foodie map because of its imaginative décor and because the Greenside café promotes emerging local art forms and artists. It’s also finding favour because it appeals to environmentally conscious consumers. “At Odd Café we were very careful about not just taking the easy route and getting in new shop fittings and furniture. I’ve always been fond of earthy things, wood, old things and combining old and new. In the café we use old milk pails, old tea cups and I find it is important to bring these elements into an environment where they will be used instead of sitting on shelves, collecting dust.”

Another area of reinvention for Patricios was the quirky use of decoupage on Odd Café’s tables. “Decoupage has a very old fashioned connotation, but instead of using the classic style we got fun comics and used this in our decoupage which lends a funky, humorous and quirky look into the café.” Another talking point at Odd Café is a big, red telephone booth waiting for Clarke Kent types to re-imagine themselves. “The telephone booth speaks to our brand and is reminiscent of Lady Gaga and her ability for reinvention. It’s whacky and out there and that speaks to who we are as a brand,” says Patricios.

Lighten up

A split level café walking down the stairs there’s a balustrade that screams Bez Valley chic. “What we did for the balustrade was to trawl Bez Valley until we found these garden gates that dated back to the sixties that we absolutely loved. It brings good old Jozi culture right into the heart of our café.”

Odd Café’s shelving has been created with old industrial pallets that have been erected with chains, and the café’s bulk heads were all reclaimed wood that had been gotten from scrap yards and repurposed. “Even the parquet flooring was second hand and came from an old shop. We just found it, collected it and then repurposed it so that it could live again.”

An eatery come art house that promises to show people how to live a delicious life, Odd Café is all about tasting new flavours while remembering soul food that makes you feel good. “Its about coming into a place and feeling yourself again, about savouring the flavours and smells of home but at the same time discovering gorgeous new art, design and music. We wanted Odd Café to be a place where people could bring old friends and discover new ones and experience all the deliciousness that life has to offer.”

Other décor features at Odd Café is a bench made out of recycled paper that can be moulded into six different styles, and chairs that are over fifty years old and have been freshened up with bold new colours. The outside of the café is studded with coloured potted herbs that are used for cooking and garnishing, and which lend colour the pavement.

Chill @ Odd Cafe

Then when you move inside there’s graffiti and a wall that has an inventive language chiselled into it. This is what Odd Café calls ‘Odda Tala’ or the odd language that is spoken in the café. “People love this and they say that it inspires them and motivates them because together with the décor it sparks new ideas. People see it very much as a place with a creative buzz.”

Greenside’s massive graffiti

Close up of graffiti detail

People moving through Greenside can’t help but noticed a massive piece of graffiti situated just above Shop 1 on 116 Greenway Street in that suburb famous for its side walk cafes, gourmet eating spots and creative retailers. The piece of street art which is causing people to stop and stare includes the messages “be yourself”; “life’s delicious” and “be different.” The graffiti stretches over a building and is some three stories tall.

 

“The age old question when it comes to graffiti goes something like is it vandalism or is it art?” asks Christina Patricios, founder of Odd Café. “This debate has raged in societies since graffiti became a permanent feature of our world and part of our popular culture. At Odd Café we believe that most graffiti is art. Obviously some defacing of public spaces isn’t wanted, but intentional street art that seeks to inspire, inform, entertain or make a social statement is completely different. That’s art that enriches us all.”

Patricios alludes to the likes of graffiti greats such as Banksy. “A huge amount of people revere Banksy’s work which has become famous because of the political and social statements he makes with his work, but what few people know is that he was born in Bristol and was part of the underground scene. His work was inspired by the British government’s approach to graffiti. In the nineties the UK government very much saw graffiti as vandalism, and mainstream society didn’t have an appreciation for street art.”

Odd Cafe's graffiti investment

Banksy started out as a free hand street artist but then graduated to doing stencil work, very much in the style pioneered by Frenchman Blek le Rat. Today Banksy’s art is sold by the likes of Christie’s of New York with pieces like “Fuck the police” fetching $229,000; “In the Event of a Divorce Cut Here” fetching $146,500 and the very well known “Love is in the air” realizing $46,850.

Odd Café is contributing to the growth and recognition of this art form locally and has invested in the three story high mural done by respected and emerging local graffiti artists. “We love design and art forms that intersect with popular culture and invested a considerable amount of money in creating a mural that covers the building Odd Café is housed in. We believe this will inject local culture into Greenside and could help people become more appreciative of graffiti as an art form,” says Patricios. “Just as Newtown is being beautified by street art we wanted to bring colour, debate and visual entertainment to Greenside.”

The three story high artwork was created by Mars and the DS Crew and took about four days to complete using some 100 cans of spray paint. “The brief was wide open which we appreciated because we find work that is wedded to branding or business overly confining and this can clash with the street art mandate, so it was important to us that we had huge freedom when doing this work,” says Mars.

Mars working on his art

“The building now sports cartoon characters, real characters and graffiti lettering which we mixed and mashed up to make it funky in keeping with Odd Café. We used purples, yellows, greens, flesh tones. When we were finished we had emptied about 100 cans of spray paint.”

Mars entered the world of graffiti when he was thirteen after seeing pictures of graffiti in an American hip hop culture magazine. “I practiced drawing some of the pictures on paper and before long my friend and I were out there painting pictures under bridges. I think I started a lot earlier than most people do,” says Mars.

What has driven Mars to mature as a graffiti artist is building a reputation. “You choose a name and try to make that name as big as you can. In the beginning that’s what it is all about. But as you mature you begin to compete with yourself and it’s all about becoming a better artist and pushing yourself further in terms of creating a legacy.”

The building featuring Greenside’s largest work of graffiti can be seen at 116 Greenway Street in Greenside Johannesburg, which is also home to Odd Café.

New art movement’s luminaries showcased at Odd Café

Superstroke art by Conrad Bo

Leading local artists who are forging a bold, expansive new art movement will showcase their work at Odd Café in Greenside Johannesburg on Saturday 06 November 2010 from 10h00. Created by Conrad Bo in 2008 the Superstroke Art Movement is gaining attention because of the distinctive, expressive and at times violent brushstrokes used in some of the artwork.

Artists featured in the exhibition include Superstroke founder Conrad Bo together with May Wentworth, Greg Simmonds, Liezel Botes, and Jaco Erwee. A core belief of The Superstroke Art Movement is that “Art feeds Art” and that exploration of the 20th and 21st century art movements are necessary to take art to a new level.

The Superstroke movement was conceived as a reaction to the significant impact the Superflat movement has had on contemporary art and popular culture. Created by Takashi Murakami Superflat’s Japanese post modernism took the world by storm with its strong Manga and Anime influences.

The key difference between Superflat and Superstroke is the subject matter and texture of the art. Superstroke is characterized by bold, expressive and even violent brushstrokes where as Superflat is predictably flat and smooth.

After founding the Superstroke movement, Conrad Bo created a manifesto for the art which in part states that paintings can be executed in both the abstract and figurative, that subject matters such as Africa, light, dark, life and death are encouraged and that collage, stencil and calligraphy may be used for impact. The manifesto encourages artists to always strive for paintings rich in texture with excessive brush or pencil strokes.

Superstroke art by Conrad Bo

The founder of Odd Café says that Greenside’s newest design, foodie and art café is promoting the exhibition to encourage the love of local culture and art. “The first thing we did when we moved into our premises on 116 Greenway Street, Greenside was to paint a massive mural on the street facing side of the building. We did this to debunk the myth that graffiti is vandalism. We wanted to show how graffiti can beautify urban life,” says Christina Patricios, owner of Odd Café.

“Promoting Superstroke is important to us because it is all about getting people to know about an African art movement that is evolving and expanding right on our doorstep,” says Patricios. “Odd Café is not just about coffee or comfort food – we want to play an important role in championing contemporary art and local pop culture. This country has an abundance of emerging talent and we feel part of our role in creating a thriving café is to showcase the artistic skill that should be shaking up our world.”

For photographs: http://www.flickr.com/photos/46560930@N07/

For more information about this exhibition visit the Odd Café Blog or Odd Café’s Facebook page.  To read more about the artists and the Superstroke Art Movement go to:

• Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstroke
• The Superstroke Art Blog – http://superstrokeartmovement.blogspot.com/

Odd Café – life’s delicious

email/  Christina@oddcafe.co.za

call/  +27 11 486 3631

web/  www.oddcafe.co.za

address/ oDD Cafe, Shop 1, 116 Greenway Street, Greenside, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Odd Café Greenside opens doors

Greenside’s new Odd Café delivers a delicious life created by an infusion of tastes, sights and sounds through café culture, comfort food with a twist, new taste explosions, as well as showcasing emerging art and music.

Greenside, Johannesburg – Saturday 23 October 2010: Greensides culinary and cultural landscape has changed with the opening of Odd Café, a new design, art, café culture, coffee and Mediterranean taste sensation which seeks to bring Jozi residents a delicious experience of the best that life has to offer.

“It’s all about a multi sensorial experience, yet making people feel at home,” said Christine Patricios wife of well known media and marketing research man Oresti Patricios who is the financial backer behind this project. “People want a destination where they can experience more than just flavour and taste. We offer café culture and an al fresco eating experience where people can taste a wide range of tapas topped with the finest imported and local ingredients, Mediterranean flavours and comfort food with a new twist that creates a bang for the taste buds by combining old familiars with a new zing,” said Patricios.

But you won’t just find some of the tastiest café flavours and the best African beans made into fine coffee variations by a trained barista, a central feature of Odd Café is showcasing emerging art and design, and creative reuse and recycling which is a feature of the Greenside café’s interior.

“We realize that people want to experience more than just food when they go out, they want to be stimulated with new sights and sounds, to learn something, to experience more,” said Patricios. “Johannesburg has a plethora of undiscovered talent an our café provides the perfect space to showcase these young and emerging creators with design and objets d’art that are available to browse and buy.” Patricios said that the café is purposefully keeping mark ups on these sales marginal, so as to encourage people to better get to know young, emerging artists.

“We’ve also changed the look of Greenside with the creation of a huge work of graffiti that has transformed the building we’re in from a bland part of the landscape into a beautiful work of art,” said Patricios adding that she was aware that the move was a controversial given that graffiti is often a misunderstood art form. “At Odd Café we’re all about infusing the old with the new, mixing up heritage with new thoughts and creativity. The graffiti took four days to do and our graffiti artist used over a hundred cans of spray paint to make the street art come alive on our three story building. As it was going up the whole neighbourhood was intrigued about it, but the result has been incredibly positive. People in Greenside love the new look.”

Art and graffiti aside, Odd Café is inspired by the café culture of New York infused with the tastes of Spain, Italy and the good old home cooking you’ll find in any Greek family worth its salt in South Africa. “It’s all about the best bread, cheeses, meats, olive oil, chocolate and chilli with a taste twist. For instance we have a sublime banana rippled boccaditto (Odd Café muffin) that’s sweet and infused with just a touch of chilli so that it tickles your palate. Our dream is all about creating unique flavours and experiences that people can share with friends. It’s about life really and memories. It’s about wanting more, wanting that which is delicious.” These taste sensations are supported by the best coffee you’ll taste in Johannesburg courtesy of specially selected African coffee beans that are expertly roasted and made into a wide range of coffees by trained barristers. “It’s our homage to the growing appetite that people in Johannesburg have developed for great coffee. You can’t have a café without serving brilliant coffee, in Jozi that’s an absolute must,” said Patricios.

Odd Café is situated at Shop 1, 116 Greenway, Greenside and the telephone number is +27 11 486 3631.

More information on Odd Café and the flavours sites and sounds that infuse this tasty tapas café can be found at www.oddcafe.co.za.

– ends –

For photographs go to : Flickr or Facebook

More photographs (Please credit Derek Smith):

1. Coffee at Odd Cafe

2. Odd Cafe exterior

3. Odd Cafe interior

For interviews or to taste the food at Odd Café or for a media visit or interview phone Chris Patricios on 083 326 2229 or email Christina [at] oddcafe.co.za

The coffee’s on us!

Odd Cafe, photo courtesy of Derek Smith

If you are a Facebook friend of Odd Cafe, then the coffee is on us this October.

All you need do to take us up on this offer is come in to Odd Cafe and tell us that you are one of our Facebook friends, and we will give you a free Caffè Americano with your meal.

This offer is limited to Facebook friends only (because we love our FB friends too much) and is conditional to a meal being bought (because you’re hungry and our food is delicious.)

Our address:  Odd Cafe, Shop 1, 116 Greenway Street, Greenside, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Look forward to seeing you all at Odd Cafe soon – where life’s delicious.

Souled Out Exhibition @ Odd Cafe

Exhibition Duration: 02.10.2010 – 10.10.2010

Address: oDD Cafe, Shop 1, 116 Greenway Street, Greenside, Johannesburg, South Africa

Photos by Derek Smith

Odd Café in Greenside will be hosting Souled Out; a graffiti-inspired exhibition. The exhibition will showcase a group of Johannesburg-based graffiti artists and illustrators/designers as well as live performances by local B boys and live drawing to be performed by the artists on exhibition. The opening is on Saturday 2 October 2010 from 09h00 to 19h00 with performances beginning at 17h00 at Odd Café, 116 Greenway Street, Greenside. For more information call Odd Café on +27(0)11 486 3631 or email info@oddcafe.co.za

ODD CAFÉ and EXHIBITION SPACE
Odd Café opened only a month ago in the creative hub of Greenside. Each month Odd Café will be hosting and exposing the talents of unique artists and designers and providing a platform for them to promote their work.

Photos by Derek Smith

The café is a postmodern dream (or nightmare) with its amazingly quirky décor, unusual and strangely delicious menu, great coffee and a downstairs exhibition space. The owner, Christine, aims to promote the spirit of “adaptive reuse”. She has reinvented materials, such as cargo palettes to suspend the light fittings or the sacks that contained the coffee beans to upholster the chairs and even somebody’s front gate has become an ornate banister. The walls have been etched into with humourous definitions of “Odd Taal” and the tables alone are a “feast for the eyes”. Her interest in graffiti lies in the way that the artists adapt their surroundings to transform and create art in the public sphere.

Souled Out is an exhibition that consists of artists all deeply rooted in traditional graffiti with a solid Hip Hop base. One might consider moving into a gallery space as selling out and, as far as galleries go, graffiti art is considered outsider art, better yet it should stay where it belongs – outside. This is why the artists have chosen to break down some boundaries and exhibit art inspired by the visual aesthetics of graffiti. And, let’s get real around here; even graffiti artists need to eat so take this unique opportunity to broaden your art collection with unique work created by artists, whose trade has become more widely seen than most art in galleries, yet entirely temporary in nature.

Photos by Derek Smith

If graffiti is what you want to see, you don’t have to go far to see their work. The façade of the building in which the exhibition takes place has been painted by the artists themselves. In keeping with the theme of “adaptive reuse” you can also check out a vintage Merc, just around the corner at the car dealership. Either way, this exhibition aims to bring “the outside” in and turn it inside out.
(Written by Juliet White)

THE ARTISTS
GROE uses spray paint on canvas to create what he describes as abstract wildstyle letter-forms based on his signature style. His letters aim to visually abstract and evolve to the point that they take on character,movement and emotion of their own. Although this is his trademark, the design and general form may change due to the nature of freestyle (improvised painting). Each work progresses in the way that Groe adds something unique and different by drawing on his immediate surroundings or state of mind.

MARS is a graffiti artist and designer and has used spray paint on canvas for this exhibition. The main focus of the work he created for this exhibition is abstract letterbased flowers. The concept of traditional still life subject matter, seen in any home combined with the usually controversial graffiti art seen outside on the streets creates a dynamic clash of genres. By taking both graffiti art and traditional flower painting out of their natural environments and remixing them, he has created what he describes as something classy with a bit of street cred.

NIC HOOPER is an illustrator, graffiti artist and motion designer. For this exhibition he has used skateboards as the surface for his creations. His passion lies in making interesting visuals. He has been in the motion design industry for the last two years, after studying multimedia design. Although this is the first time exhibiting work to the public, he has been doing graffiti for the last ten years and has been drawing his whole life. He says that as with most of the best things in life, it started just for fun and ended up engulfing his whole life. The self-proclaimed South African earthling also runs Shake Well Designs with artist, Tanner Peters.

TANNER PETERS has used mostly found objects and surfaces for this exhibition. He studied fine art, paints graffiti and currently runs the Johannesburg graffiti-based company, Shake Well Designs, in partnership with fellow artist Nic Hooper. His work has to do with the shapes, movement and flow of the genre and how they come together on a static surface. He explores these elements in other figurative images like animals or skulls. The curves and tapering of the horns are inspired by the linear flow and style of graffiti. He breaks down the graffiti style of drawing and applies the methods to other formats and visually appealing forms.