Art Highlights

For years now I have travelled the great southern lands, especially this one, South Africa, the Happysadland. It’s harshness, it’s diversity, strangeness and unique beauty has settled like dust in every pore of my being. As tough as it is to say, after independence in 1994, a disastrous and corrupt ANC (African National Congress) rule has caused many small towns to almost disintegrate in terms of maintenance and management. Many municipalities are now dysfunctional and bankrupt. But, my heart pumps out hope, images, and stories, for on the other hand, the resilience of our people remains remarkable. Somehow, we laugh and cry away our troubles, and many of us now turn to the creed of our Rugby World Cup winning Springboks—-“Stronger Together”. So came into being, after visiting many small towns, the realisation that many towns in every corner of this land, carried English, German or Dutch names. Many were named, in loneliness and longing, by the pioneers that trekked into the interior in the early 18th century. My heritage, baked since 1696 by the African sun, lies with my Dutch, Afrikaner forefathers. In this book, ‘Going Dutch’, I follow a trek northwards, visiting all nine South African towns that were baptised with Dutch names. This resulted in a trip to the Netherlands to photograph the mother cities of these South African towns. These visuals of the Dutch cities, with their enormous contrasts and architectural beauty, punched and rattled loose all that dust that had been ingrained in my pores over the years. It lifted me pictorially and spiritually to a new height, which I hope that this book will show in some way.

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A 300-plus-page primer on the vanguards of contemporary African art The Qatar-based ARAK Collection holds over 4,000 works of contemporary African art. The more than 100 works presented here provide a comprehensive overview of continental trends. Each artist receives a biographical essay written by Ghanian researcher and curator Nneoma Angela Okorie, and South African art historian Barnabas Ticha Muvhuti

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Lucid and lyrical, Lucienne Bestall’s debut collection extends reflections on the seductions and limitations of language. With words and pictures borrowed from literature, contemporary art, art history, and mass media, Except for Breath asks after those experiences that elude simple description and turn instead to image and metaphor. The collected essays appear an unlikely gathering – taking as their respective subjects death, disappointment, divine love, an unfamiliar city, the news, and headaches. Yet while each is discrete, together they share subtle aff inities, their narratives shaped by memory’s imprecisions and dreams retold, by magical thinking and wishful thinking, and coincidence mistaken as sign. Pairing art writing and life writing, Bestall’s limpid prose is delicately revealing of her subjective encounter with a shared repertoire of familiar texts and images.

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The stories in Once Removed traverse the theatres, artist studios and archives that characterise the world of contemporary art and performance. But they also zero in on the homes, private lives, daily journeys and emotional interiorities of the various characters that inhabit them. While the stories in Once Removed draw from the undercurrents of the South African art world, their concerns and evocations are not limited to it.

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