Artist Dineo Seshee Bopape recently had her first solo exhibition in the United States. The installation commissioned by Art in General titled sa ____ ke lerole, (sa lerole ke ___), examines gender, and the politics of place, memory and self embedded within land. This installation is characteristic of how she webs together natural elements with…
History is often spoken about as one story which unfolds on a linear timeline. Artist and Masters student Sethembile Msezane thinks about the impact of this understanding of history in relation to commemoration, monuments and memory. When she completed her undergraduate studies she knew she had to respond in some way to the discomforts she…
Practicing artists Ella Krivanek and Dorothy Siemens are the founders of the moving gallery Space Space. They met in Toyko in 2014. At the time Ella was thinking about how to create a space that could blend what she had learned and enjoyed as a practicing artists at home in Melbourne with the different scene…
The Skateroom teamed up with South African artist Robin Rhode to create a limited edition range of skateboards adorned with five of his iconic artworks. The premise behind the work at The Skateroom is to make art accessible. This is based on a social consciousness which is the heartbeat of what they do. The Skateroom…
I caught up with young, up-and-coming illustrator Nokwanda Themba to chat about her work and her vision for the future. “I’m studying a BSc in Human Physiology. But I have been drawing since I was a child,” Nokwanda explained when asked about how her journey as a freelance illustrator began. Having always had an interest…
The work of Swiss photographer Georg Gatsas has been published by magazines such as Wire, Dazed, i-D and Beat. Georg has been operating between London and Zurich for the past couple of years. He recently spent some time in Johannesburg as part of an artist residency organized by Pro Helvetia. I caught up with him…
I just love it when Jazz and print medium collide! One example of such can be found in Mongezi Ncaphayi’s latest body of work whose “distinctively abstract visual vocabulary” (SMAC, 2016) brings these two mediums together. His works are minimalist in form. They’re representational of the sounds found in one’s own recounts of memorable score….
I’m standing in the garden area of an undisclosed town house in Vredehoek, Cape Town, with a sticker of a crude but charmingly-drawn house on my shoulder. The picture of the house had been fashioned out of three letters that Cape Town nightlife had come to know well over the years: YOH. If this sticker…
The ‘Turn-up Talk Series’ is a collection of discussions in which young Jo’burgers share their nocturnal lives: stories and reflections from the city’s dancefloors. The candid conversations explore nightclubs as stages for young people’s negotiations of identity, belonging and power. This weeks episode is about how we ‘carve out space in nightclubs’. Produced by Beth Vale…
In conversation with Reshma Chhiba, the exhibitions coordinator at the student-run space The Point of Order, she mentioned the above quote as a question that has often been addressed by the final year fine art students at the Wits School of Arts. NEWWORK is the graduate show and has been running for 6 years. “The…
Artists are the mirror to the wonders and horrors of our society! They reflect the state of ideas and beliefs in 2 dimensional forms. Yet, when this mirror becomes an act of controversy, very often artist’s freedom of speech are not enough to protect the artist from being silenced by the very society that they…
Fragrant tendrils of smoke and echoes of musical melodies emit through an otherwise unmarked address. A corrugated iron door opens into an intimate space of symbolic death. Sliver flags catch glimmers of the florescent lights upon arrival. A space of mourning marked by corner-bound shrines – memorializing moments of a collective life. Freshly plucked roses…
