Category: Review

Octopus choreography in a miasma of glue

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 […]

The man who refused to regret punishment

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 […]

How to break a cycle of terror

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 […]

Letters to my unborn pineapple

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 […]

Drawings for the birds

In 1943, a curious little book of stories about animals was published. Little Veld Folk was penned by one Cecil J. Shirley, it was aimed at a child readership, but its intense pen and ink drawings, particularly one about a bird who was vain, offers an edgy glance […]