COLIN RICHARDS (1953 – 2012)
Rock , Hard Place
2003
Mixed media on paper
28.5 x 39cm
BIOGRAPHY
Colin Richards was an internationally renowned writer on contemporary South African art, an acclaimed artist and curator and a highly respected art educator.
Richards was widely regarded as an authority on conceptual art in South Africa, and his theorisations on ‘critical’ humanism in relation to the contemporary art of Africa are considered significant contributions to the history of art.
Richards was born in Cape Town and studied at the University of South Africa, Goldsmiths College (University of London) and the University of the Witwatersrand, where he was awarded his PhD in 1995. He served as a medical illustrator at the Wits Faculty of Medicine from 1977 until 1985, when he joined the Wits Fine Arts Department, where he attained full professorship in 2002.
During his time as a medical illustrator in the Wits Faculty. One could see the evidence of the discipline he developed during his years as a medical illustrator in his artwork more generally, with its careful observation and attention to detail. In late 1977, Richards was presented with a bundle of photographs by Hillel Shapiro, a forensic pathologist at Wits Medical School, who required him to label them in a particular way, a common task for Richards at the time. What he only came to understand a little later (although he could see that they were visually different from the usual photographs he got) was that these images were the post-mortem photographs of Steve Biko. This experience was significant for Richards and he wrote about the effect it had on him as causing him to feel ‘confused, compromised, implicated, and ultimately angry’. This experience served to inform his participation in the Faultlines: Inquiries Around Truth and Reconciliation show at the Castle of Good Hope and its surrounding discourse.
During his period of service at Wits, Richards played a leading role in the restructuring of the Fine Art Master’s programme, as well as in initiating the teaching of Art Criticism to undergraduate students. It was during this time that he established an international reputation for rigorous scholarship and for confronting fundamental questions about the disciplines of Fine Art and History of Art.
His strong interest in psychoanalysis led him to more overtly healing forms of intervention. A registered art therapist in both South Africa and the United Kingdom, he played a pivotal role in the development of professional art therapy in South Africa. Together with Mamatlakeng Makhoana, he established an art therapy service in Orlando, Soweto, and was also actively involved in professional bodies in art therapy. Richards joined the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2010.
Many commentators noted that Graft, the only all-South African show at the Second Africus Johannesburg Biennale (1997), was one of the event’s strongest shows. As its curator, Richards was concerned with addressing the word ‘graft’ in three specific definitions that can be attached to it: as a cutting and joining exercise such as the botanical process of grafting; as work (‘to graft hard’); and as a form of corruption.
Richards held solo shows at the Gertrude Posel Gallery (1981) and at Gallery AOP (2003 and 2009), as well as participating in numerous group shows.