MORE THAN AN exercise of escapism into the flaws and faux pas of privileged fictional characters, Craig Higginson’s most recent novel, The Book of Gifts, is a yarn about values and the fragility of young sensibilities. It’s a quick read because it is well crafted and the words […]
A RASH OF grim and oft hilarious issues that have grown out of the ongoing pandemic come under the sophisticated loupe of Mpendulo Troy Myeni, in Let Me Out, a South African short film made with a cell phone and released on youtube. It’s a testament to the […]
IN THIS AGE of social media, Wikipedia and any and every other kind of dumbing down and shallowing out of real thought, the presence of Ashraf Jamal’s anthology of art essays, published by Skira in 2017 raises a middle finger to lazy thinking, sloppy writing and weak academic […]
NOT EVERY WOMAN out there is a defenceless shrinking violet as cliché and politically-correct rhetoric may tell you. Take the one who bursts into the private toe-related agonies of Kistunov, a 19th century Russian curmudgeon and banker (played by Johann Nel) to beleaguer him with her own domestic […]
WHAT WOULD MAKE a man risk his life by balancing precariously on one hand with his legs above him, on a rain-soaked ledge of a building high above a city half covered by mist? That’s what acrobat Hans Prignitz did in 1948 in Hamburg, as a favour to […]
“YOU ARE THE cause of all the problems in this society, and we are going to kill you.” This is the gist of the kind of letters to which Maia Lekow and Christopher King’s compelling Kenyan documentary The Letter refers. Featured on this year’s Durban International Film Festival, […]
MULTI-TALENTED MASTER OF fiercely bright colours and the unequivocal backbone of the Durban arts community, Andrew Verster was known for his magnificent fine art and theatre design, as well as his contribution to the National Arts Festival. He wrote, mentored and allowed the audacity of art to run […]
AS YOU WALK into the space of ceramicist Eugene Hön’s solo exhibition at FADA gallery, there’s an element of the sacred that enfolds you. And it isn’t about being there alone in a mask, honouring coronavirus protocol. It’s about objects created with a robust mix of skilled preciousness […]
my mother, my madness: A book review by Gillian Rennie. SEVERAL THEMES SURFACE in Colleen Higgs’s chronicle of her mother’s last years. There are those any daughter might recognise (the bond of loyalty, the bondedness of reality) and there are those anyone who has witnessed a decline towards […]
DANCE REVIEW: THEMBA MBULI’S MANMADE. WHAT IS AN item of clothing in this world? A swatch of fabric stitched and cut to fit a body? A thing to simply cover your nakedness? A repository of fashion values? Or a thing to define you in a specific way, fraught […]
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