A freelance arts writer since 1998, I fell in love with the theatre as a toddler, proved rubbish as a ballerina: my starring role was as Mrs Pussy in Noddy as a seven-year-old, and earned my stripes as an academic in Fine Arts and Art History, in subsequent years. I write for a range of online and print publications, including the Sunday Times, the Mail & Guardian and artslink.co.za and was formerly the arts editor of the SA Jewish Report, a weekly newspaper with which I was associated for 16 years. This blog promises you new stories every week, be they reviews, profiles, news stories or features.
IT IS THE ceramic dog that gets to you, first. He’s painted a delicate shade of pink. And he stands there, on the table, the epitome of uber kitsch, with his painted tongue out, his painted black eyes poised and the striations that indicate his fur all abristle. […]
YOU SHOULD NEVER look a gift horse in the mouth, they say. And sometimes that gift horse comes in a surprising form. In Die Selle, this week’s Afrikaans-language radio drama, which airs on Thursday night, Magda Retief (Karen Wessels) is a woman who lives on a South African […]
IN THIS WORLD, where there is a growing pall of homophobic legislation in a whole clutch of countries, it is a breath of fresh air to see drag pushed all the way out in the spotlight. New York-based Men in Tutus brings some frissons of lewdness, a healthy […]
IF YOU HAVE been privileged to have been raised by people with a long history of a complicated relationship with things, you will relate well to the gentle, empathetic and sometimes feisty humour bordering on pathos that characterises Esta Steyn’s gem of an Afrikaans-language radio play this week […]
CARTOONS, YOU THINK, as you begin to look at the body of work by Theresa-Anne Mackintosh currently on show at Galleri Kalashnikovv. But you put that thought to bed rapidly, when you look properly: When you’re standing in front of a work that plays with your expectations as […]
WHEN FIRST YOU cross the threshold of this gallery, this exhibition, you’re assailed by explosions of colour. There’s a hot pink that you can feel as agony in your intestines, an intense purple that makes you brace physically and there’s a sweeping of nuance in the shape of […]
WHEN YOU WATCH the political rhetoric being thrust hither and yon on social media and other young platforms, the one thing that you notice is its lack of nuance. Political diatribe in South Africa in 2019 paints white people as racists. Blanketly. Utterly regardless of their history or […]
EVERYONE KNEW HER face. Everyone. When SABC anchor Tracy Going was brutally beaten by her boyfriend, it was knowledge instantly in the public domain. This was a story that rocked South Africa, not only for its grotesquely sensationalist value, but it opened up a whole hornet’s nest of […]
SOMETIMES IT TAKES a fresh young voice to rejuvenate an old chestnut in ways you couldn’t have imagined. Anna Greenfield’s Afrikaans language radio drama Liewe Pynappel debuted this evening on Radio Sonder Grense. It’s a gentle tale of pregnancy and love, in that order, with a little feisty […]
A NAME SYNONYMOUS with music radio, David Blood was legendary in so many ways. He had a dulcet voice, an impeccable understanding of the political currents that conflated with culture, and an ability to shapeshift and re-invent himself as the industry changed in values and priorities. He also […]
Geoff Sifrin
Robyn Sassen
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