London’s Tate Modern takes a new view of Africa
Although quite tight-lipped about the details, the gallery wants to create an inclusive history of art.
Visual Arts
Brett Murray: Putting it bluntly
Rory Bester believes that the violent outrage at Brett Murray’s
painting of Jacob Zuma is as unsurprising as Murray’s work itself.
Lifelong dedication to communities’ art education
Obituary – Charlotte Schaer (1946 – 2012)
Challenging preconceptions about society
Owner of the Goodman Gallery, Liza Essers defends visual art’s ability to challenge and shape consciousness and to shift people’s hearts.
Defacing race and culture: The Spear and politics of representation
Brett Murray’s artwork has brought into sharp focus the issue of black people’s representation at the hands of whites, writes Mpho Moshe Matheolane.
Spare us the schoolboy satire of ‘The Spear’
Some random cock and balls plonked onto a picture of the president does not good satire make, writes Matthew Partridge.
Ai Weiwei: Pricking your conscience
After the vast emptiness of the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, Ai Weiwei this week filled a London space that could hardly be more of a contrast.
Shoe Shop strides its way into inner-city Jozi
The festival has come from Frankfurt via Mali and deals with migration through a focus on movement
at its most basic level.
Drawing a fine line between order and chaos
To tell you what Neil Le Roux’s monochrome work means appears to need a paradoxically massive vocabulary.
The fracking intrusion of a sacred space
The artist who gives landscape a voice has created a work that disturbs environmental complacency.
Art takes the cake
An African rights body has called on a Swedish minister to resign over her role in an art event that highlighted female genital mutilation and racism.
Different strokes for different folks
Naive painting is now all the rage and two artists’ work reveals what makes it work and what doesn’t.
Putting a price on despair
A version of <em>The Scream</em>, one of the world’s most famous paintings, is expected to fetch at least $80-million at an auction next month.
From Hirst to last in chic circles
Damien Hirst is the world’s richest artist, but the scales are falling from investors’ eyes.
Jo’burg’s true colours
Who better to open Hermann Niebuhr’s exhibition than a former city chief and one of his biggest fans?
Man on the move: Federico Freschi
"The most you can ask of art," Federico Freschi says with a glint in his eye,"is for it to alter your perceptions, even if for a nanosecond."
The studious observer: Nontobeko Ntombela
Nontobeko Ntombela, curator of contemporary art at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG), laughs about the idea of being considered a guinea pig.
Power of the picture: Thato Mogotsi
Thato Mogotsi is something of an autodidact, a member of that tribe of people who opt out of the safe and sane precincts of formal education.
The purposeful questioner: Clare Butcher
Clare Butcher believes that "the root of the word curate is to care".
The rigorous historian: Anthea Buys
Where does an independent curator fit into a South African art landscape that is split between commercial galleries and archival museums?
The Accidental Curator: Portia Malatjie
Portia Malatjie (26) insists that she never envisaged herself as a curator.
The art of travel
Visiting Nigerian conceptual artist Olaniyi "Akirash" Akindiya is one of those people with the uncanny ability to bore his way into any scene.
‘Like giving birth’ tagline is a bit laboured
To this writer, comparing the creating of art to giving birth smacks of pre-modernist religious romanticism and teenage art angst.
Nitegeka’s bundles of baggage
A Burundian artist explores the relationship between refugees and their personal cargo.
Art as an Olympic event
A South African artist chose the workers as his subjects during his residency at London’s Olympic Park.
Chinks in the shadows
Viviane Sassen explores the spaces between home and away, night and day, life and dreams.
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The white elephant in the room
Artist Candice Breitz is using the popular soapie <i>Generations</i> to further the racial debate in South Africa.
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Indian artist assaulted over nude paintings
The artist said he had been beaten up at his gallery by five men over nude paintings that the attackers claimed were an insult to the country.
Silk cape out of spider’s web
It has taken eight years and more than one million Madagascar golden orb spiders to create a work of art.
Jo’burg gallery awash in sewage
Institution faces a funding crisis that could result in priceless works in its storerooms getting damaged.
Currency of culture
Deciding what constitutes a South African heritage work of art seems to be a guessing game.
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Arab artists flourishing as uprisings embolden a generation
Innovative and edgy work attracts attention around the world — and record prices at auction
