Author Archives

Robyn Sassen

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.

Have we forgotten what we’re here for?

WHEN A MAN comes on stage just before a heavily touted show starts, to announce his great respect for all the people performing here because no one is earning money for doing so, is this a thing you’re meant to clap about? There is a huge problem in […]

A bit of this, a bit of that

TRY NOT TO be misled by the title of this exhibition. It isn’t the third iteration of a computer game about snakes. Or eyes. Once you’ve disposed of that preconception, you’ll feel a little freer to explore the collaborative pieces in this showcase to the work of Pretoria-based […]

Johannesburg: Portrait with blood

BEING ALIVE ON this African continent is a very complicated thing, particularly if the home in which you were raised has become lethally hostile to you. Investment analyst by day, fictional writer by night, Bulawayo born Sue Nyathi, who burst onto readerships’ awareness in 2012 with her debut […]

Two men in a sauna

PROFOUND GRIEF IS a curious cipher of very real emotions which reach much deeper than maybe you’d like. It’s a tongue loosener, a memory jolter, a redefiner. In Easter Island, a beautifully crafted English-language radio play by Anton Krueger, you get to meet a father and a son […]

What lies beneath

AS YOU ENTER this intimate little space, your heart and eyes are grabbed by a lion lying ponderously before you. It’s the central focus of a large scale painting called Cave Painting and as you move closer to the work so do other things in this piece begin […]

A burnished menagerie

IS IT CARVED wood? Or is it burnished clay? Maybe it is made of flesh and blood? Nothing is completely obvious in this biblically loaded exhibition of beasties which you know and others from the annuls of sculptor Michael Teffo’s sense of whimsy. Either way, you will want […]