AS YOU OPEN the first page of A Several Plot, and step into the whirligig of 16th century European society, with all its costumes and class structure, its hierarchies and ravaging illnesses, so may you be forgiven for feeling as though you’re no longer of the 21st century. […]
IT’S ONE THING to take a beautiful novel and translate it into a film which drives a similar story line. It’s quite another to parade a film under the title of said novel, but twist its ending into something else entirely. Curiously, Ian McEwan who wrote the novel […]
AS THE FIRST trumpet cadence sounds, of the Annie theme song, before the curtains open, the children in the audience hush in anticipation, jiving in their seats as the jazzy showbiz magic of the tune takes over. Directed by Jill Girard and Keith Smith and featuring the astonishing […]
YOU MIGHT HEAR the name ‘Michael Meyersfeld’ and think of very carefully orchestrated and posed images that aim to satirise the complicated world in which we live. You might come into this exhibition, glance at the work on show and feel the need to take a step back […]
STARE INTO THE harsh winter light outside for a second or two and then close your eyes, tight for another second or two. That afterimage that has burnt itself into your eyeballs is what contemporary American philosopher Timothy Morton mooted an electric peanut, and this is the focus […]
THERE’S A POTENT and muscular articulation of joy as you enter the gallery space for the Stevenson Gallery’s celebration of its 15th anniversary. It’s difficult to pinpoint why this happens because contemporary artwork is traditionally not happy but contemplative, not easy but sophisticated and often very self-focused. The […]
IT WAS APARTHEID’S jester Pieter-Dirk Uys who some years ago famously cited the shenanigans of the state as being the best possible script writers for his work. He wasn’t alone. Playwright Mike van Graan doesn’t miss a beat in using every dirty nuance and crass irony dished out […]
YOU MIGHT BE urged to giggle at a chap made of an old rusted colander and some cotton reels, or a female angel with fish bones as wings, mooted ‘fish wife’, considering the gesture to be comic, perhaps for children. But when you engage closer with the body […]
A MIX OF unadulterated capriciousness, fragility that makes you frightened to breathe too hard counterpoised with functional robustness, and a storytelling quirkiness that shimmers, not to mention monumentality to make you laugh: this is what you get to experience with the work of potter Carolyn Heydenrych. Over 30 […]
IT TAKES A great deal of wisdom to make a film as beautiful as Chappaquiddick. It has to do with an understanding of the fact that the story was told by history itself in 1969. It also has to do with an understanding of the texture of the […]
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