You can lean on me

WHAT ARE FRIENDS for if we cannot lean on them? Brainstorming the notion across a myriad of popular songs, Sometimes I have to lean in … is a sheer gem of a work featuring two dance veterans who do not have dancers’ bodies any longer. It’s a work […]

Elu’s yizkor

THE CLEAVAGE BETWEEN art and sacred ritual is very ancient. And it’s not often that contemporary art reaches richly and bravely beyond the limitations of what our society thinks art is, or should be.  It’s, after all, dangerous and unmapped terrain. But Steven Cohen, who has never shied […]

Hedwig takes it all the way

YOU KNOW THAT headache you get when you are grinding your teeth really energetically to ensure that the outer chaos doesn’t make your whole head implode? That is the kind of feeling you may emerge with when you exit Hedwig and the angry inch. It’s a mash up […]

A bluebird trilled in gold, here

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN a veteran South African painter encounters the work of Japanese Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) through her paintbrush? In short, a little madness. Don’t expect slavish copies of the wave that has slipped into commercial use ad nauseum, when you visit the latest exhibition of paintings by […]

To see infinity in a cow

SHE STANDS WITH supreme dignity, her horns reaching up in a glorious arc. A man milks her, but she looks, unmoving, at infinity. At you – on the other side of the photograph. This is not a photograph of an animal, it’s a paean to God, a portrait […]

Mud and the meaning of perfection

SOMETHING COMPLETELY ASTONISHING is currently on show at the University of Johannesburg’s FADA Gallery. Named Ntwananhle and the R2 Boys, this exhibition is only up for another day or two, but it’s a gallery visit you won’t regret. This is Muziwandile Gigaba’s masters exhibition and it serves to […]