IN 1970, AN extraordinary poem by South African poet Douglas Livingstone saw light of day. Gentling a Wildcat is a profound contemplation of the meaning of life as observed through a feast, conducted with frenzy by insects on the body of an animal. It’s about death viewed through […]
MEDITATIVE ENERGIES CAN be found in the most unexpected of places and often one needs just to still one’s inner noises and there it is, before you. There’s just one day left of Tamlin Blake’s extraordinary current solo exhibition, but it’s certainly worth changing your plans for. A […]
AS YOU REACH the top of Circa Gallery’s oval spiral ramp that has become so iconic on Jan Smuts Avenue in Rosebank, and enter this exhibition of works on canvas by Bambo Sibiya, you realise something overwhelming. This is not a simple art show. It is an event. […]
THERE’S SOMETHING INTRINSICALLY engaging and satisfying about saturated colours painted with a flat sense of accuracy, but there’s also something deadening about this approach to art-making. The more you look at the paintings in acrylic on canvas by Neill Wright in his show at the Everard Read Gallery, […]
THE FORMAL, POLITE space of the Everard Read Gallery in Johannesburg has not lost its sense of prestige. It’s polished and honed in a particular way. There’s certain atmosphere of traditional sacredness in this space. And as a gallery, it’s a complicated sacredness, that is as much about […]
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 […]
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 […]
Veteran South African artist, Deborah Bell’s latest exhibition showcases the kind of muscular body of work that gives you courage: the art world is indeed not comprised only of sham, drudgery and broken dreams, to say nothing of self-indulgent sophistry and vague conceptual ideas poorly translated. Rather, the […]
Geoff Sifrin
Robyn Sassen
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