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. I am currently a Research Associate at Wits University. This blog promises you new stories every week, be they reviews, profiles, news stories or features.
WITH A TOUCH of Pablo Picasso, a hint of Hieronymus Bosch, a foray in the direction of Norman Catherine and another towards Mmakgabo Sebidi, not to mention some hefty nods to George Grosz, the work of Blessing Ngobeni seduces all your senses from the moment you walk into […]
INSTINCTIVELY, YOU CAN hear the gentle, almost innocuous concatenation of 1960s office party dialogue as you look at these paintings, with the delicate clink of glasses and the understated and polite chatter, the men in their tuxedos and cufflinks and the women in their cocktail best. You can almost […]
AS YOU APPROACH what may seem at the outset a haphazard mass of calligraphic paint marks, piling paint smears upon paint smears, the fine hairs at the back of your neck may stand up. This is a landscape. Those tiny little ant-like forms emerging from it are people, and […]
HOW BEST DO you tell a story sullied and broken by trauma? Do you blurt it all out in one brutal shriek? Or do you give it context and framework? Do you make it circuitous? And funny? Joseph Heller did it. Alan Bleasdale did it. As did Luigi Pirandello. […]
A PLAY OF binaries and detritus, red wool and solar powered Consol glass, The Year of the Bicycle is a work that begins with the threat of too much whimsy. But then it reaches into the belly of its own sense of momentum and this abstract tale of the […]
AH, SOPHIATOWN. HOME and suburban melting pot of such a rich concatenation of frenetic, beautiful and terrible culture that forms the backbone of who we are as creative South Africans, striving for that precious riff or that elusive line of poetry to make us remember what matters. Ah, the […]
IT’S RATHER AN odd kind of name to be trending around senior high school students at the moment. Coriolanus is arguably one of Shakespeare’s densest and more difficult works. With no witches or ghosts, monsters or weather patterns to give it verve, it’s a tragedy of political violence and […]
Lucy and me: Matshediso Mokoteli embraces the harrowing tale of Paul Noko’s ‘Fruit’ with wisdom and depth. Photograph by Andrew Brown. A YOUNG girl quietly talks of life, the universe and everything to her plastic doll, with the kind of illogical quietude and gentle give-and-take that little children adopt […]
How well do you know your own history? Would you be able to talk to it under scary scrutiny by a cop with a past replete with anger? With this premise, playwright Mongiwekhaya makes his debut in a beautifully constructed piece of theatre which feels like the opening lines […]
Whatever else we may be, South African society has become virtually paralysed by the godalmighty demon of political correctness. Enter writers Steven Sidley and Kate Sidley. Not playwrights, but highly skilled and creative professionals, they have put all the mumbo jumbo of new fitness lingo and a whole […]
ansunecilliers
beckkglass
Chester Miggels
Gillian Rennie
elizhanduvenhage
erinventer02
Geoff Sifrin
godukazinobulali
henricopg
huibrechtdehart
isabeausophiajoubert
jessicajoubert
kaylamullerr
matthewvanderwalt
meereieliefde
olgalouiselemmer
Peta Kaplan
Robyn Sassen
shanelschoombee
thembanhlapoart
Willem Pieter
zainabchoonara
Recent Comments