Category: Visual Art

Bad men, rotten clouds and ambiguous shades of evil

YOU MIGHT NOT be able to recognise that your boss is a psychopath. Until, of course, her behaviour gives her away. Evil or madness in a human being in real life is not easily recognisable. People don’t run around bullying and destroying other people’s lives with a great big […]

A sjambok to make you sing

  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 […]

Intimate days of wine and roses

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 […]

Blinded by Kentridge

AS SOON AS most gallery visitors and those who boast an interest in the creative industries announce that there’s a William Kentridge exhibition in town, a sense of respectful silence embraces the conversation. It’s like a declaration that God has landed in Johannesburg and may be seen on Tuesdays […]

JAG’s brave curators, absent support

As you walk into the majestic space of the Edwin Lutyens-wing of the Johannesburg Art Gallery – through the entrance that faces the railway lines – you are confronted with two utterly superb Dumile Feni drawings. They tower over you as they reach, in their characteristic brutal charcoal […]