15+ questions for Angela Tuck

SINCE getting her start at 14 selling sunglasses at Makro in Booysens, Angela Tuck’s art and design work has included branding, corporate identities, book publishing, advertising, newspapers, exhibitions, museums and everything in between. She is an activist to elevate all things visual in media but on the inside she just wants to sew, paint and watch good comedy with her dogs.

1. Describe yourself in a hashtag?

#donttellmewhattodo

2. What were you like as a child?

According to Mother Teresa I didn’t comply with instructions and I was the only one of her five children that she “had to” strap into a harness to keep me in sight and under control.

I always felt “different" from my peers; my head was so busy and loud that I could never rest. I am famed in our family for asking at a very young age: “What is normal?”

3. Favourite toy?

The best toys belonged to my brothers. One of my favourite memories is making roads and ramps in the soil under the banana trees in our Durban back yard. My brother Gordon and I spent hours driving his yellow Tonka trucks including a tip truck and cement mixer on those gravel roads. To this day, I have a moment of silence when I see a cement mixer on the road. My favourite vehicle of all time.

Other highlights were my fishing road and bait box and my dress-up cowboy set. But the High Life came on my 14th birthday when I got a RED portable hard plastic record player and Rod Stewart’s Young Turks album. This was a breakthrough for my parents cos until then we were only allowed to listen to Burl Yves, Cliff Richard (“Why Should The Devil Have All The Good Music?”) and Richard Clayderman.

4. Something about you that few people know?

I have one kidney, an enlarged spleen and only nine fingertips having chopped one off when I was six years old due to being over-eager (which, by the way, is the story of my life).

5. A typical day in your life?

Please ask me in a month because for the past two-and-a-half years, days and nights have been about Vrye Weekblad and any time away from my studio has been to get groceries or meds. No part of me is zen as much as I know my colleagues rely on me to bring calm to all proceedings 😁. I am a work-in-progress with a focus on “work” and the hope of “progress” coming to a theatre near you soon(ish). The only thing typical around here is Friday’s VWB edition.

6. Your perfect day?

No one needing me. No anxiety about missing messages and calls. Freedom to trawl thrift stores, secondhand shops and The Fabric House armed with a reasonable budget and an empty boot. Meeting up at my daughter's studio to have a chat and a drink. And then sewing ’til dawn.

7. What do you listen to while you work?

YouTube Skip Ad YouTube Skip Ad YouTube Skip Ad YouTube. Politics and comedy with the ideal being political comedy but one can get conned into a headline like: Joanna Lumley: “I have always loved getting older, so being 70 is fabulous" and I can’t say I hate “A Glimpse Inside John Galliano’s Treasure-Filled Hideaway in Northern France” to escape the Nuuslys. Next thing you know Piet Croucamp’s artwork features Ernst Roets horizontal on an Orania velvet chaise longue while I listen to 2 000 voices singing Handel’s “Messiah”.

8. Favourite shows you watch?

My DStv playlist says “Disk full” because of shows I once set to record and am yet to enjoy like the BBC’s The Great British Sewing Bee, The Great Pottery Throw Down and Fake or Fortune?, and the Australian series The Block. But on a daily basis I watch the American political comedy shows on YouTube with the best being Jimmy Kimmel. A series I obsessed over was Pose with Billy Porter, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez and Dominique Jackson set in the LGBTQI+ subculture of New York in the ’80s and ’90s. 

9. Your go-to comedians and creators?

Let me rather use this opportunity to introduce you to my new fave: Angelica Hicks. And another of her vids.

10. If you could choose one designer to make you a dress to wear to the Oscars, who would you choose and what would it look like?

Thank you for asking, Lau! It would be a collab between Dame Vivienne Westwood (may her glorious punkness RIP) and myself. It would never be a dress but an upcycled tartan (three kinds) suit comprised of trousers, a skirt and a coat worn open to reveal a cut-to-pieces T-shirt. Painted across the front: You Do You. And vintage lace-up boots. No bag cos pockets rule.

11. If you won the Lotto what would you do?

I hope it will be gazillions so that I can pimp every single under-resourced school in South Africa with windows and grass and flushing toilets and broadband. Every Single School.

Then I will invest in every single city to embrace and accommodate informal traders with stalls for all seasons and storage options for their wares.

I will throw everything at my sister to fight cancer with the best oncologist in the best institution.

I will book a trip for my entire family from the eldest to the youngest so that we can all be together in a fabulous setting in Africa. And I will give each person loads of cash, all delivered in my Hello Tuck handmade bespoke bags.

To treat myself, I will buy an outfit from Maxhosa Africa.

12. Which publications, websites or blogs do you follow?

None. The only mailers I haven’t unsubscribed from are Vrye Weekblad (duh), Klyntji and Frankie Magazine (an utter delight for young-at-heart, unique and even weird creators). I dip in and out of things because I can’t maintain my focus in the face of wrong typography, imagery, font size, colours and stupid takes. Watching and listening is a lot easier for me than reading unless it’s phrased by one Deborah Steinmair.

13. Journalists you follow?

Christiane Amanpour, James O’Brien, Mehdi Hassan, Max du Preez, Ari Melber, Fareed Zakaria, Marianne Thamm, Elie Mystal, Jeffrey Goldberg, Kara Swisher. Are you sure you didn’t mean to ask me which artists or rugby players I follow?

14. Your pet hate?

The self-aggrandisement of mediocre people. Victimhood. Fakeness. Transphobia. Asymmetrical hemlines.

15. Your guilty pleasure?

Snacking in bed in the early hours with the only light available from my laptop.

16. Your superpower?

Let it be known that I have identified three unannounced pregnancies and foreseen three deaths. But it’s not that. It’s probably that I am an excellent judge of character and can accurately sense the vibes and dynamics in most settings. If I tell you that someone is a snake in the grass, get off the grass. But my greatest superpower is that I am a magnet for special needs.

17. The trait you most despise in yourself?

Listen, I have spent the last decade working towards self-acceptance but if you have to know, it’s that I just won’t shut up when silence is freely available to me.

18. What would you change about yourself if you could?

The need for speed and expecting everyone to want the same.

19. Biggest regret?

Not having my neurodiversity diagnosed sooner.

20. What are you frightened of?

Guns.

21. Scariest animal?

The President of the United States.

22. An older woman you admire?

Fran Lebowitz.

23. What do you find sexy?

Badly-behaved women.

24. Highlight of your life?

There have been many but without a doubt, these three are in my top ten:
#1 Giving birth like a rock star to my son at home in a birth pool while the dogs ran around and Rod Stewart sang “As Time Goes By”.
#2 The day I adopted my newborn lamb, Violet Tuck.
#3 Having the Baardskeerdersbos Orkes play “Ek en my nooientjie” at my wedding.

25. Which five things are always in your fridge?

Two kinds of insulin for my Type 1 diabetic child and eggs, Butro, soy sauce, cheddar … which I pretend to be anchovies, caper berries, olives and artichokes.

26. If you could emigrate tomorrow where will you go?

To titillate all my senses it would need to have a hot climate, hot colours and hot dancers in a simple setting. So probably Mexico. Salsa, samba, sun and succulents; Frida and fabric; tiles and tortillas; markets, margaritas and music.

27. What would your dream house look like ?

An abandoned factory with an internal courtyard in a rural setting. The focus will be on the many outbuildings: a tool shed, a studio, a shop with access to the road to sell my handmade products to passersby, a farm stall, a kothuis, a spray painting booth, a house for my sheep ... I am not bothered with a formal house as long as I can make my mark and it has enough space to dance.

28. Dream car?

I don’t dream about cars but my head does spin for the most macho Land Cruiser. And anything on wheels with massive storage and roof racks that can hold a fully-stocked tool shed. For doing the royal wave, it will have to be a 1969 Mustang (pink), obviously.

29. Favourite perfume?

Haaaaaaaate perfume. I struggle to even sit near perfumed people without my restless leg syndrome escalating to full blown Olympic sprinter mode. I don’t hate the smell of a person who has rolled in vetiver grass and if I really want to make an effort, there is nothing that a splash of watered-down vanilla essence can’t fix.

30. Most embarrassing moment?

Let me settle on one. I had a boyfriend in the late ’80s who much to my delight loved a dress-up. One day, alone in his parents’ house, we rummaged through his mother’s kists to discover the outfits and jewellery of his great-great-aunt. He donned her glittery emerald green maxi cocktail dress, plus jewels and a tiara with full make-up. I took the photos. Some months later, his mother developed the camera film.

31. What would you have been if you weren’t a designer/artist?

Builder. Architect. Dancer.

32. If you could take 10 people to spend a week with you in the Bahamas who would you choose?

Fran Lebowitz, RuPaul, Christiane Amanpour, Rod Stewart, Herman Lategan, Vivienne Westwood, Freddie Mercury, Frida Kahlo, Billy Porter, Dame Edna Everage and because I can’t follow instructions, Salvador Dali, Jim Hamilton, Bette Midler, Henri Matisse, Rassie Erasmus, Kara Swisher, Oscar Wilde, Caster Semenya, Roald Dahl, Jeff Goldblum and my dogs, Buttercup and Megumi Tuck.

33. If you have to choose a song to play all day long?

“Weekend Special” by Brenda Fassie. But hot on the heels would be all 1970s Disco and Motown.

34. Your last meal?

Massive bowl (pink enamel) of homemade soup (Boere-style minestrone with soup mix and stewing beef) and gewone brown bread. And then another two bowls.

35. What will you miss the most about Vrye Weekblad?

Being on an Afrikaans WhatsApp group with the cleverest, funniest, rudest people. All with special needs.

36. How do you want to be remembered?

Sobbing crowds would be nice.

♦ VWB ♦ 

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