SABC ART NEWS
A major exhibition of works by Diane Victor @diane.victor opened this week at the Comtesse de Caen Pavilion of the Académie des Beaux-Arts @academiedesbeauxarts in Paris, in recognition of her having been awarded the 10th Mario Avati Engraving Prize last year. ‘Through her powerful and engaging works, South African artist Diane Victor explores social and political tensions, pushing the boundaries of print with a unique mastery of trait and techniques,’ reads the statement of the exhibition, which runs until 31 May 2026.
Running concurrently a few metres away at the 100-year-old Galerie Larock-Granoff @galerie_larock_granoff , is Victor’s solo exhibition ‘Fallen Heads’. ‘To kick off the month of drawing, we are excited to showcase a body of work that powerfully explores the boundary between humanity and animality,’ says the curatorial statement. ‘Through charcoal, candle-smoke, and soot, Diane Victor captures the ephemeral. At the crossroads of the political and the symbolic, her work disturbs, fascinates, and questions our times.’
Born in 1964 in the mining town of Witbank, Victor grew up during Apartheid. A graduate of Fine Arts from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, she has established herself today as one of the major figures of the contemporary art scene, recognised for the power and unflinching complexity of her work, in which physical, psychological and sexual violence are recurring themes.
Victor first visited France in 1985 on an Anya Millman scholarship and, in 1988, she spent 10 months at the Cité Internationale des Arts as the winner of the, then, Volkskas, now, ABSA L’Atelier Award.
The SABC Art Collection is proud to house numerous artworks by Victor. These include Blind Justice [Frame #1], Glue Boys [#2], Why Defy [#3] and All for the Right Price [#4] from her series ‘Disasters of Peace’ Part I (2001–2003), inspired by Francisco Goya’s ‘Disasters of War’.
Photographs of the Academy of Fine Arts exhibition [Frames #5 & 6] are by Patrick Rimond.
![A major exhibition of works by Diane Victor @diane.victor opened this week at the Comtesse de Caen Pavilion of the Académie des Beaux-Arts @academiedesbeauxarts in Paris, in recognition of her having been awarded the 10th Mario Avati Engraving Prize last year. ‘Through her powerful and engaging works, South African artist Diane Victor explores social and political tensions, pushing the boundaries of print with a unique mastery of trait and techniques,’ reads the statement of the exhibition, which runs until 31 May 2026.
Running concurrently a few metres away at the 100-year-old Galerie Larock-Granoff @galerie_larock_granoff , is Victor’s solo exhibition ‘Fallen Heads’. ‘To kick off the month of drawing, we are excited to showcase a body of work that powerfully explores the boundary between humanity and animality,’ says the curatorial statement. ‘Through charcoal, candle-smoke, and soot, Diane Victor captures the ephemeral. At the crossroads of the political and the symbolic, her work disturbs, fascinates, and questions our times.’
Born in 1964 in the mining town of Witbank, Victor grew up during Apartheid. A graduate of Fine Arts from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, she has established herself today as one of the major figures of the contemporary art scene, recognised for the power and unflinching complexity of her work, in which physical, psychological and sexual violence are recurring themes.
Victor first visited France in 1985 on an Anya Millman scholarship and, in 1988, she spent 10 months at the Cité Internationale des Arts as the winner of the, then, Volkskas, now, ABSA L’Atelier Award.
The SABC Art Collection is proud to house numerous artworks by Victor. These include Blind Justice [Frame #1], Glue Boys [#2], Why Defy [#3] and All for the Right Price [#4] from her series ‘Disasters of Peace’ Part I (2001–2003), inspired by Francisco Goya’s ‘Disasters of War’.
Photographs of the Academy of Fine Arts exhibition [Frames #5 & 6] are by Patrick Rimond.](https://www.sabcart.co.za/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed-pro/img/placeholder.png)
South African photographer Jo Ractliffe @joractliffe currently has a solo exhibition on at Jeu de Paume @jeudepaumeparis in Paris. Curated by Pia Viewing, ‘En ces lieux / Out of Place’ runs in tandem with ‘Global Warming’, an exhibition by British social documentary photographer Martin Parr, who died in December 2025.
Situated in the heart of Paris, in the Tuileries Gardens, Jeu de Paume, a centre for art and international creation, is a landmark site for the presentation of images of the 20th and 21st centuries, ranging from photography to cinema, and from video to installation and online creation.
‘Ractliffe is […] known for her quiet yet penetrating examinations of landscape, memory, and the lingering aftermaths of conflict,’ reads the exhibition statement. ‘Over four decades, her work has explored how histories—particularly those shaped by war, displacement, and apartheid—imprint themselves on the terrain. Ractliffe’s photographs resist the immediacy of the journalistic documentary image; instead, they approach the world obliquely, revealing meaning through absence, nuance, and the stark, poetic atmosphere that emanates from certain situations.’
The SABC Art Collection houses seven artworks by Ractliffe—among them three images from her 1988 series ‘Nadir’ in which she combined photocopies, sketches, and collage to arrive at final compositions, which she printed using layers of photolithography, varnish and screenprint. She combined photographs of aggressive dogs (signs of violence and brutal police control) with images of squatter camps, forced removals, relocation settlements, and rubbish dumps to transmit a dystopian sense of the fear and anger that held sway during the states of emergency that were imposed by the apartheid government in the late 1980s. Ractliffe has described ‘Nadir’ as ‘a way to image this world gone mad, without simply reiterating the discourse of resistance’.
‘Out of Place’ runs until 24 May 2026.
#southafricancontemporaryphotography #sabcartcollection #jeudepaume #joractliffe
The 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, ‘In Minor Keys’, conceived by the late Koyo Kouoh, will be opening on 9 May 2026, and will be installed across the Giardini, Arsenale and other locations in Venice.
‘In looking to artists working in Salvador, Dakar, San Juan, Beirut, Paris, or Nashville, Koyo sought to envision how their ingenuity, breadth of material experimentation, and visionary ideas bear connections to other artists and movements in simultaneity,’ reads an official statement. ‘In this spirit, “In Minor Keys” expands upon Koyo’s relational geography of encounters with artists over her lifetime.’
The following artists from Southern Africa are among the 111 individual artists, collaborative duos, collectives and artist-led organisations invited to participate in the exhibition: Nolan Oswald Dennis; Nicholas Hlobo; Senzeni Mthwakhazi Marasela; Georgina Maxim; Thania Petersen; Johannes Phokela; Berni Searle; Mmakgabo Mmapula Helen Sebidi; Buhlebezwe Siwani; Kemang Wa Lehulere; and Billie Zangewa.
The SABC Art Collection is proud to house artworks by six of these artists. A work from the Collection by each artist is featured here: Hlobo ‘Isisindo samadlozi’ (2006); Marasela, ‘Theodora III’ (2005); Phokela, ‘Exaltation Allegory’ (1998); Searle, ‘Still, Passing By, 3’ (2005); Sebidi, ‘We Have Worked’ (1994); Zangewa, ‘Hm… Oh!’ (2006).
Following Kouoh’s passing, the exhibition continues in the spirit of her vision through the dedicated team she assembled: advisors Rasha Salti, Marie Hélène Pereira, and Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo; editor-in-chief Siddhartha Mitter; and research assistant Rory Tsapayi. Wolff Architects were appointed by Kouoh to realise the design and scenography for ‘In Minor Keys’—a phrase inspired by music, referencing the quieter, more emotional and intimate tones.
We note with regret and concern that there will be no South African national pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year, following Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture Gayton McKenzie’s withdrawal of funding and support for the selected artwork, ‘Elegy’, by Gabrielle Goliath, which addresses femicide and genocide.
Throwback to the opening of Still We Rise: Artworks from the Ifa Lethu and SABC Art Collections, which ran at The Atrium, Keyes Art Mile, Johannesburg from 30.10.25 to 23.11.25.
SABC CEO Nomsa Chabeli gives voice to the mission and values that are the lifeblood of the SABC Art Collection.
#sabcartcollection #southafricanart #diversity #equity #inclusion
We’re honoured to partner with the repatriated Ifa Lethu Collection to exhibit a selection of anti-apartheid resistance art works from both collections at Keyes Art Mile until the 23rd November. Please join us for the opening. #resistanceart #antiapartheidart #arthistory #struggleart
Gerhard Marx’s @gerhardmarx solo exhibition ‘Landscape Would Be the Wrong Word’ is currently showing at Everard Read Gallery @everard_read_johannesburg . From delicate labyrinthine structures to tectonic earthen constructions, these finely wrought sculptures, reconfigured map works and filigree plant drawings ‘pulse with energy and are like portals to new realms’.
Expanding on the title of the exhibition, Marx comments, ‘Instead of making a landscape, I’m making a place.’
‘You feel you could step into them: reach forward, rotate these three-dimensional planes of maps and plants, expand them, inhabit them,’ reads the curatorial statement.
By folding, cutting and re-assembling maps, the artist deconstructs the way they shape our view of the world and proposes new spatial possibilities and meanings.
Marx has long be drawn to dismantling and reconstituting maps, and the SABC Art Collection is proud to house one of his earlier reconfigured map works, ‘Horizontal Figure’ (2005) [Detail, Frame # 1]. Also in the Collection is a photographic contact print titled ‘Bird with Stars’ (2007) [Frame # 2] and ‘Claudiograph’ (2008), a work composed of weeds, watercolour and glue on paper [Frame # 3].
Marx continues to work with gathered plant matter—dried nasturtium stems, hydrangea heads and poppy stalks—to build delicate otherworldly surfaces.
The panels of his new bronzes are cast from the Karoo ground—precise imprints of the rugged surface of the Earth.
‘What links all these works is their immediacy and vitality,’ reads the exhibition text. ‘They resist flat description, conjuring layered, immersive spaces charged with possibility.’
Marx’s exhibition runs until 1 November 2025.
‘Mercurial Map’, 2025, cut and reconfigured map fragments on aluminium, 140 x 160 x 29 cm. [Frame # 4]
‘Lattice’, 2025, bronze, 80 x 65 x 3 cm. [Frame # 5]
‘Wilding Drawing’, 2025, plant material, tissue paper, and acrylic ground on canvas, 125 x 150 x 6.5 cm. [Frame # 6]
#southafricancontemporaryart #placemaking #deterritorialisation #perspectiveshift #earthmatters #sabcartcollection #gerhardmarx
Currently on show @javett_up is ‘One and the Many’, a daring new exhibition by guest curator Storm Janse Van Rensburg in collaboration with Javett-UP’s curatorial team. Constellations of artworks explore the ways in which artists narrate the relationship between the individual and the collective, or self and others.
Six invited artists – Stephané E Conradie, Goldendean, Ledelle Moe, Abdus Salaam, Inga Somdyala and Katlego Tlabela – have large-scale artworks in dialogue with three Javett-UP collections: the South32 Collection, the Javett Family Collection and the Bongi Dhlomo Collection.
Visitors are greeted by a site-specific commission by Inga Somdyala, which soars from the ground floor through the atrium spaces.
In the first chapter, ‘Living School’, the artwork groupings explore abstract impulses, musings on spirituality and religion, and the complex intimacies between humans and the natural world.
The second features artworks by Tshwane-based artist Katlego Tlabela whose connection to black South African art histories is explored through the inclusion of artworks significant to his journey, such as Gerard Sekoto’s ‘Song of the Pick’ (1946). Goldendean’s voluptuous, sensual ‘Soft Vxns’ (2021) dialogues with works by Mme Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi, Tracey Rose and Adriene Piper, among others. Fragility, the safety of home and making new objects from fragments is central to Stephané E Conradie’s sculptures and wall-based works, which dialogue with serial works by Jane Alexander, Willie Bester and Sam Nhlengethwa, among others.
‘Colossal Time’ includes two large-scale, bodily concrete sculptures by Ledelle Moe, a video work by Abdus Salaam exploring the metaphysicality of water, and Jeremy Wafer’s photographic series ‘Antholes’ (1998), which explores monumentality and collective action.
The SABC Art Collection is proud to house artworks by several of the featured artists, including Ezrom Legae, William Kentridge, Bonnie Ntshalintshali, Dumile Feni, Louis Maqhubela, Harold Rubin, Ernest Mancoba, Durant Sihlali, Goldendean, Mme Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi, Tracey Rose, Jane Alexander, Willie Bester, Sam Nhlengethwa and Jeremy Wafer.
Kudos to Paul Emmanuel @paulemmanuelartist , who was recently awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree (honoris causa) from Montserrat College of Art in Boston. He was invited to give the keynote address to the graduating class of 2025 and did so wearing sparkly heels. ‘I hope I`ve encouraged some to face their fears, embrace their perceived challenges, even if they seem ridiculous or uncomfortable, […] find their balance and walk tall,` he said.
Last year, Emmanuel graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. He delivered his thesis paper in the same silver, sparkly, $7 heels, picked up from a thrift store in Philadelphia. ‘Apart from the joy of prancing around in the silver sparkles, I used the heels as a prop to talk about gender and my past growing up in apartheid South Africa,’ he wrote.
Since 2022, Emmanuel has been a Fulbright Scholar in the United States, researching the cultural dimensions of its public spaces, while investigating its involvement in Middle East conflicts. He is the currently Director of Civic Engagement for the Tour de Force Foundation, Washington DC and a lecturer for the Medical College of Wisconsin’s discussion series: Talking with Monuments: Veteran Dialogues on Remembering.
Born in 1969 in Kabwe, Zambia, Emmanuel’s multidisciplinary work is focused on exploring the ways mental and physical landscapes interact in their construction of memories and identities. Trained as a printmaker, specialising in lithography, he creates photo-realistic drawings using a blade to scratch into the surface of exposed photographic paper, removing layers of the surface to reveal its undertones. [‘Vault of Breath’, 2000, Slides 1 – 5] His work is well-represented in the SABC Art Collection.
In 2004, on the 10th anniversary of South Africa’s democracy, the first of his series of counter-memorials ‘The Lost Men’ [Slide 6] was installed at the 1820 Settlers Monument in Makhanda. In 2007, phase two took place in Maputo, Mozambique, and, in 2014, phase three was installed adjacent to the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme in France as an official event of the WWI centenary.
The bronze sculpture ‘Mangy Dog’ (1996) by prominent South African artist Ezrom Kgobokanyo Sebata Legae (1938 – 1999) is currently on loan to the High Museum of Art @highmuseumofart in Atlanta, Georgia. It is being shown as part of ‘Ezrom Legae: Beasts’, the first major museum exhibition dedicated to Legae’s work in the United States, which opened last week and runs until 16 November 2025.
The more than 30 works on view address apartheid through form and metaphor, exemplifying the ways in which Legae, like other artists at the time, used coded visual languages to subvert and endure tyranny. Legae’s sculptures and drawings often depict animals in distress, subversively articulating the suffering and resilience of his fellow South Africans.
Born in Vrededorp, Johannesburg, Legae studied at the Polly Street Art Centre, where he learned from artists like Cecil Skotnes and Sydney Kumalo. Later, he continued his studies at the Jubilee Art Centre, eventually becoming a teacher and taking over Kumalo’s position at the Centre in 1965.
The current exhibition features drawings from 1967 to 1996, foregrounding the 1970s and 1990s, each groundbreaking periods in South African history. Amid mounting unrest and anti-apartheid protests in the 1970s, such as the Soweto uprisings (commemorated yesterday on Youth Day), activists and civilians endured increased violence, exile and imprisonment, often without trial and including solitary confinement. This period is considered Legae’s most prolific, in which he produced pencil, ink, and charcoal depictions of animals as covert representations of apartheid’s players and impact. The artist produced substantially less until the 1990s, when he re-emerged during South Africa’s political transition.
‘The poignant symbolism in Legae’s work reminds us of the expressive power of art, especially for those living through oppression,’ said the High’s Director, Rand Suffolk. ‘Through this exhibition, we are […] telling a story of 20th century South Africa, which is particularly timely as we enter the third decade after the end of apartheid.’
#southafricansculpture #animalmetaphors #apartheid #resistance #transnationalsolidarity
‘Miss January’, a 1997 painting by South African artist Marlene Dumas, recently sold for over $13.6 million (R243 million) at a Christie’s auction in New York, setting a new record for a living female artist. In this magnum opus work, which stands 2.82-metres high, Dumas revisits ‘Miss World’, an artwork depicting 10 models, that she painted 30 years earlier at the age of 10.
Dumas was raised in Kuils River in the Western Cape and studied at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town, before relocating to the Netherlands in 1976, and studying Painting and Psychology at the University of Amsterdam. Her figurative paintings are inspired by personal memories and a diverse array of printed matter including Polaroid photographs, newspaper and magazine cuttings, letters, and Flemish paintings. Race, sexuality, guilt and innocence, violence and tenderness are recurring themes in her work.
There are two works by Dumas in SABC Art Collection. ‘Faceless’ (1993) [Slide #1] is one of a limited edition of 200 silkscreen prints that accompanied her 1993 solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Dumas’ artworks are often frankly erotic, exploring themes of sexuality, love, death, and shame. Central to her practice is the human figure—often naked or partially clothed. Painted from photographs, Dumas’ models strike Playboy-style poses: backside in the air, or crouched down naked in high-heeled boots, face raised suggestively, or peeling off one stocking in a silk-gloved hand. Yet, in this work, the face and breasts of the female figure are covered up as if in a gesture of shame. Reflecting the viewer’s desire for total exposure back at them, it is a work that poses questions about the potential for abuse in the power of the gaze.
‘Agter Die Nag Bedrieglik Die Dood’ [Behind the Night, Deceptively Death] (1982) [Slide #2] is a meditation on mortality’s capacity to energise the living. The brilliant blue of this lithograph defies the gloominess of the blunt tombstones hovering within a dark shape that repeats their form. The text in the image reads: ‘The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvellously.’
The SABC Art Collection team joins countless others across the world in mourning the loss of visionary curator Koyo Kouoh, who died on 10 May. Born in Douala, Cameroon, Kouoh was the Executive Director of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa @zeitzmocaa in Cape Town.
Last week, the Museum held a memorial service to honour her life and legacy. Rousing words and poignant memories were shared by speakers David Green, Jochen Zeitz, Albie Sachs, Liesl Hartman, Gavin Jantjes, Wangechi Mutu, Berni Searle, Thania Petersen and Bulelwa Kunene—each celebrating her extraordinary ingenuity, dynamism and passionate commitment to building spirited African diasporic communities of contemporary art practice.
In 2024, Kouoh made history as the first African woman to be named artistic director of the world’s most prestigious art exhibition. Last week, La Biennale di Venezia @venice.art.biennale announced that it would be following her vision for the 61st International Art Exhibition, to be held from 9 May to 22 November 2026. Titled ‘In Minor Keys’, the exhibition will be realised exactly as she conceived it. For six months, Kouoh and her team—which includes advisors Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Hélène Pereira, and Rasha Salti; editor-in-chief Siddhartha Mitter; and assistant Rory Tsapayi—worked intensively to shape the exhibition’s vision—developing its theoretical framework, selecting the participating artists and artworks, commissioning catalogue authors, defining its graphic identity and exhibition architecture, and engaging in close dialogue with the invited artists.
‘“In Minor Keys” invites audiences into a sensory and emotional realm, where quiet frequencies, poetic gestures, and intimate worlds offer a counterpoint to the dominant noise of global crisis and spectacle,’ reads the news announcement via C&. ‘Kouoh embraces the metaphor of the “minor keys”—in music, feeling, geography, and social practice—as a space of resilience, resistance, and relation.’
Rest in power, chère Madame Koyo.
#koyokouoh #tribute #africancontemporaryart #visionary #inminorkeys
Johannesburg – in all its fractured, shifting, dynamic, and jazzy dimensions – takes centre stage in the exhibition ‘Urban Entanglements: How Art Reflects Citymaking’. Currently on show at Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, this trifecta features a selection of paintings, drawings, and charcoal works on paper by three South African greats: the late David Koloane (1938–2019), Kagiso ‘Pat’ Mautloa @kagisopatmautloa , and Sam Nhlengethwa @sam.nhlengethwa – all alumni of The Bag Factory artist studios in Fordsburg. The selected artworks span a period from the 1980s to the 2020s, from the final years of apartheid and into the unfolding 21st century.
Pictured here is a pairing of works by each artist – from the Goodman Gallery show and from the SABC Art Collection. In each instance, the work on show precedes the work held in the Collection.
Street Scene (1999) [Slide #1] is an iconic work by Koloane, whose charcoal drawings and mixed media works capture Johannesburg’s restless rhythm through expressive, gestural marks. Although ‘My Bike’ (2001) [Slide #2] touches on the same theme of transport, traffic, and movement through the congested city streets, it is a more unusual work in the context of Koloane’s oeuvre – a rare declaration of individual freedom and personhood by an artist whose work is more devotedly concerned with the collective struggles of the city’s Black residents to survive and thrive in the face of systemic oppression.
Mautloa, who continues to work from the Bag Factory, reflects on how Johannesburg’s landscape and collective psyche have been shaped by mining and the lingering effects of racially divided space. With its high contrasts and bold linework, ‘Portrait’ (2023) [Slide #3] is a jazzy work that transmits a sense of the multiple personalities one might adopt in the course of navigating and adapting to the divergent contexts of city life. Shackscape (1997) [Slide #4] is an abstract mixed-media, found-object painting that cites the industrial textures of urban life and the materiality of informal settlements in which dwellings are knocked together from sheets of salvaged metal. [Read on in comments…]
Guests and visitors to @radissonredrosebank should get ready to be wowed by a stellar selection of super-sized artworks by the legendary @sam.nhlengethwa , ranging from large-scale acrylic, oil and collage works on canvas to finely textured hand-woven tapestry pieces. Presented by @rdcpropertygroup in association with @goodman_gallery , the exhibit is part of a sustained programme of striking art installations and contemporary African design features at the hotel, which has firmly established itself as a ‘creative hospitality hub’. To maintain a fresh and current perspective, the artworks in the Radisson RED common areas are updated every nine to 12 months, as new works continue to be added to the Hotel’s art collection.
Sam Nhlengethwa is part of a pioneering generation of late-20th and early-21st century South African artists whose work reflects the sociopolitical history and everyday life of the country. Through his paintings, collages and prints, Nhlengethwa depicts the evolution of Johannesburg through street life, interiors, jazz musicians and fashion.
The SABC Art Collection is proud to host one of the widest selections of the artist’s work [as featured in the reel].
Nhlengethwa was born in Payneville, near Springs, a satellite mining town on Johannesburg’s East Rand, and grew up in Ratanda location in nearby Heidelberg.
In the 1980s, he moved to Johannesburg where he honed his practice at the renowned Johannesburg Art Foundation, founded by Bill Ainslie. Nhlengethwa was one of the original artists at the legendary Bag Factory Artist Studios in Newtown, in the heart of the Johannesburg CBD, where he used to share studio space with fellow luminaries, like Pat Mautloa and the late David Koloane.
Nhlengethwa’s practice features in important arts publications, such as Phaidon’s The 20th Century Art Book (2001).
Launch event photographs by Mbongo Keswa @_mkfoto
#sabcartcollection #samnhlengethwa #goodmangallery #rdcproperties #radissonredrosebank #southafricancontemporaryart #collageartist #jazz #johannesburgart #jozilife
Gerard Sekoto’s ‘Self Portrait’ (1947) is currently emblazoned across the façade of the @centrepompidou in Paris. His painting takes pride of place on the exhibition poster and catalogue cover of ‘Paris Noir’ / ‘Black Paris’, which runs until 30 June 2025.
‘Black Paris’ retraces the presence and influence of Black artists in France from the 1950s to 2000. It offers a vibrant immersion into cosmopolitan Paris, a place of resistance and creation that gave rise to a wide variety of practices, from a new awareness of identity to the search for transcultural artistic languages.
Sekoto (1913 – 1993), who was both an artist and a musician, is recognised as a pioneer of South African 20th-century modernism and social realism. He was born at the Lutheran Mission Station in Botshabelo, in the Eastern Transvaal (now Mpumalanga). From an early age, he favoured painting and drawing as his chosen medium of expression. He attended Grace Dieu Diocesan Teachers` Training College, in Pietersburg (now Polokwane), where he took art classes and was mentored by Ernest Mancoba.
After spending four years as a teacher, he left Mpumalanga to pursue his full-time art career, living and working first in Sophiatown, Johannesburg (1938 – 42), then in District Six, Cape Town (1942 – 45), then in Eastwood, Pretoria (1945 – 47).
In 1940, the Johannesburg Art Gallery bought one of his artworks – the first image by a Black artist to enter a South African museum collection – and by the mid-1940s, Sekoto had earned a reputation as a significant artist. But his opportunities remained severely limited under apartheid. Seeking a larger and more inclusive art world, he emigrated to France, where he would remain for the rest of life in self-imposed exile.
The SABC Art Collection is proud to be home to Sekoto’s ‘Husband and Wife’, a bold and tender oil painting of a young couple [Slide #4]. In 2023, the artwork had its surface gently cleaned and its shimmering metallic frame repaired as part of a three-year restoration and conservation project.
[Paris images courtesy Karel Nel]
Several artists represented in the SABC Art Collection will be participating in this week’s @investeccapetownartfair , which will be taking place at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC), from 21–23 February, with the VIP Preview happening this Thursday, 20 February.
The Fair brings together 124 exhibitors and 500 artists from 58 countries and five continents. It will feature a mix of curated sections, special projects and inner-city activations, popping up across Cape Town’s cultural landscape. Highlights include:
• Tomorrows/Today, ‘Experience, Attempt, Experiment,’ curated by Dr Mariella Franzoni (Barcelona, Spain), which showcases cutting-edge practices from the global contemporary art scene.
• SOLO 2025, ‘Playscapes: Shaping Worlds and Selves,’ curated by Céline Seror (Amsterdam, Netherlands), featuring bold, solo presentations that offer a deep dive into an artist’s work.
• Generations, curated by Heba El Kayal (London, United Kingdom), which focuses on the dialogue between emerging and established artists across generations.
• The new name Lookout section, will spotlight emerging galleries and innovative artistic narratives, offering visitors the chance to discover fresh voices in contemporary art.
Alongside the core sections of the fair, Cabinet/Trophy is special project curated by Alexander Richards and Dr Phokeng Setai of Exhibition Match (Cape Town, South Africa).
Also, as part of the Unbound City programme, various local museums will host events, offering a chance to engage with exhibitions and works by leading artists.
Looking forward to seeing you at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair!
#InvestecCapeTownArtFair #ICTAF2025 #southafricancontemporaryart
Currently showing at the Origins Centre at Wits University is Impact, Joni Brenner’s artistic response to the 2.5–2.8-million-year-old Taung skull. The exhibition marks the beginning of Wits’s year-long commemoration of the discovery, in 1924, of the fossilised skull of the Taung child, a young Australopithecus africanus, found by quarrymen working for the Northern Lime Company in Taung, a small town in the North West Province. The name means place of the lion and was named after Tau, the Chief of the Legoya or Bataung people. Tau is the Tswana word for lion. Anatomist and anthropologist Raymond Dart described it as a new species in the journal ‘Nature’ in 1925 and Dean Falk, a specialist in brain evolution, has called it ‘the most important anthropological fossil of the 20th century’.
The exhibition arises out of Brenner’s long-term creative engagement with the skull, exploring themes of fragility and survival, destruction and creation, uncertainty, loss, pressure and chance.
Brenner, a lecturer at Wits School of Arts, was born in Zimbabwe and is an honorary member of the Marigold beadwork co-operative in Bulawayo. ‘[Her] work is primarily concerned with portraiture but not in the traditional rendering of the physical likeness of an individual. [It] investigates commemoration, life and death and her technique bridges abstraction and realism,’ says The Artists’ Press in Mpumalanga.
The SABC Art Collection houses two sculptures by Brenner: Sofonisba [1–3] and Anguisola (both 2005) [4–6). These clay forms have a primal, essential quality, affirming the fundamental urge toward creativity and the animate circuit that runs between earth, hand, heart and brain. They speak directly of the Earth from which they were wrought and, from certain perspectives, call forth skull or phoetus – the living being taking shape.
Their titles offer a clue to Brenner’s womancentric practice. Sofonisba Anguisola (1532 – 1625) was one of the most accomplished painters of the late Renaissance, known for her portraiture. Her work, like that of many early female painters, was often attributed to male painters – as various as Titian, Leonardo da Vinci, Giovanni Battista and others.
