Serge Alain Nitegeka’s 2014 exhibition at Stevenson Johannesburg brought geometric paintings, silhouetted figures and charcoal portraits into a sustained exploration of blackness. ArtThrob’s review connected the Burundian artist’s formal language with migration, absence and ancestral memory. Portraits of his grandmothers, presented alongside his own likeness as self-portraits, complicated the relationship between individual identity and family history.
Ian Grose’s 2014 exhibition Some Assumptions at Stevenson Cape Town brought together patterned cloth, reworked religious imagery and repeated views of a studio window. ArtThrob’s reviewer praised his control of paint while describing an elusive, self-questioning practice. References to Renaissance altarpieces, Monet and abstraction became ways of asking how painters translate observation and inherited conventions into images.
Chad Rossouw’s 2014 exhibition The Planet’s Wake at Brundyn+ in Cape Town combined fabricated artefacts, altered historical imagery and science-fiction references. ArtThrob’s review considered how these objects unsettled distinctions between evidence and invention, drawing attention to photography, materials and the authority of historical records. Accompanying fiction by Matthew Blackman offered another route through the exhibition without supplying a single definitive narrative.
A 2014 exhibition at the University of Cape Town presented portraits made by Singarum Moodley at Kitty’s Studio in Pietermaritzburg between 1972 and 1984. Curator Steven Dubin selected 80 photographs from an archive of discarded negatives. ArtThrob’s review explored how clothing, poses and personal accessories offered insight into self-presentation and everyday social life during apartheid.
Kiluanji Kia Henda’s 2014 exhibition at Brundyn+ in Cape Town used photography and video to unsettle familiar narratives of Africa. A fictional African aid organisation reversed the usual geography of humanitarian assistance, while images of monuments and military remnants examined Angola’s changing identities. ArtThrob’s reviewer singled out Concrete Affection – Zopo Lady for connecting urban space, memory and belonging in Luanda.
Trevor Coleman’s 2014 survey at SMAC Gallery in Stellenbosch revisited paintings made between 1960 and 1977. Lloyd Pollak’s ArtThrob review emphasised their shifting colour relationships, geometric structures and optical effects, describing connections between hard-edge abstraction, Op Art and African decorative forms. Alongside its praise, the review noted that ageing and damage had affected some painted surfaces.
Portia Zvavahera’s 2014 exhibition Wayfinding at Stevenson Johannesburg presented paintings of women, prayer and shared emotional experience. Percy Mabandu’s ArtThrob review considered how oil-based printing ink, layered marks and patterned cloth shaped the works’ atmosphere. It read religious references and grouped figures through questions of gender, authority and catharsis, while highlighting the expressive force of the artist’s surfaces.
A 2013 C& feature by Jonathan Fine examined Nigerian exhibition pamphlets held by London’s Stuart Hall Library. Its bibliography brings together records from the late 1980s and early 1990s, including publications featuring El Anatsui, Ndidi Dike and Obiora Udechukwu. Fine argues that these easily overlooked documents preserve information about artistic networks and working conditions that more prominent publications can miss.
Reporting on William Kentridge’s lecture at the New York Studio School, Hyperallergic traces how experiments in painting, acting and filmmaking informed the South African artist’s practice. Kentridge describes erasing and redrawing charcoal images on the same sheet, allowing their remaining traces to shape his animations. The account connects this open-ended process with his staging of Shostakovich’s The Nose and his MoMA retrospective.
ART AFRICA’s February 2010 auction preview highlighted South African works by Alexis Preller, Irma Stern, Maggie Laubser, William Kentridge, Colbert Mashile and Helen Sebidi. It also discussed sculptures by the Amadlozi Group and recalled the collective’s 1963 Johannesburg exhibition and Italian tour. The report described collector enthusiasm through auctioneer commentary; its estimates and buying advice belong to that historical sale, not today’s market.
The eighth Bamako Encounters brought work by more than 100 African photographers to venues across Mali’s capital around the theme of borders. Kerryn Greenberg’s review traced migration, war, trade, sexuality and social exclusion through works by Jodi Bieber, Bouchra Khalili, Baudouin Mouanda, Zanele Muholi and others. It praised the biennial’s artist-centred scale while questioning visa barriers, uneven curation and the difficulty of engaging local audiences.
Spier Contemporary 2010 selected 100 artists and 132 works from more than 2,700 submissions gathered through 13 centres across South Africa. The Africa Centre’s national exhibition was scheduled to open at Cape Town City Hall on 14 March 2010. A five-person curatorial team made the final selection, while architect Nabeel Essa developed an installation contrasting contemporary artworks with the Edwardian building’s historic interior.
Zanele Muholi received the Casa Africa prize for best female photographer and a Fondation Blachère award at the 2009 Bamako photography biennial. IRN-Africa also recognised Muholi’s contribution to research on sexuality in Africa with a Fanny Ann Eddy accolade. The announcement noted an Allegheny College residency and group exhibition, followed by Muholi’s planned participation in a Penn State colloquium on Sara Baartman.
A January 2010 ART AFRICA notice introduced a monograph on Cape Town-born painter Marlene Dumas. Its contents combined Dominic van den Boogerd’s survey, Barbara Bloom’s interview, a close reading of a painting of Josephine Baker, and the artist’s own writings. An update by Ilaria Bonacossa considered paintings and drawings made after 1999, placing the publication within Dumas’s developing international career.
TIME included South African artist William Kentridge in its 2009 list of 100 influential people, with a profile written by Lou Reed. Reed focused on Kentridge’s ability to translate interior states into charcoal drawing, animation, theatre and installation. Discussing works including Preparing the Flute, Artist and Model and Stereoscope, the profile presented his practice as an unusually direct expression of emotion, beauty and shared humanity.
ART AFRICA’s January 2010 notice described an official art-poster edition for the South African FIFA World Cup, distributed locally by David Krut Projects. Participating artists included William Kentridge, Marlene Dumas, Julie Mehretu, Hassan Musa, Barthélémy Toguo, Soly Cissé and Kay Hassan. The historical announcement documents a visual-art project around the tournament; it does not establish present-day stock or purchasing availability.
Goodman Gallery announced Eleven/TwentyTen, a biennial-style programme of site-specific exhibitions, performances, screenings and public-space installations planned for Johannesburg and Cape Town during the 2010 World Cup. Its international and African roster included El Anatsui, Joël Andrianomearisoa, Bili Bidjocka, Ghada Amer, Yinka Shonibare, William Kentridge, Robin Rhode and others. The project positioned contemporary art across both cities during a period of intense global attention.
ART AFRICA reported in January 2010 that David Goldblatt had received the 2009 Henri Cartier-Bresson Award for TJ, his ongoing photographic examination of Johannesburg. It said an exhibition would follow in 2010. The notice connected the project to decades of observing South African society and emphasised an approach attentive to complexity rather than propaganda or sensationalism.
Cape Town's Greatmore Studios was renovating and adding studio space and a small gallery as it prepared for its tenth anniversary in 2008. ArtThrob reported plans for a September Thupelo Found Object Workshop, a November fundraising exhibition and an archival publication. The announcement also highlighted visiting-artist residencies, mentoring and community workshops, documenting the organisation's role in supporting exchanges among local artists and practitioners from elsewhere in Africa and abroad.
Johannesburg's proposed JHB ARTCITY project would enlarge selected artworks onto inner-city buildings around the 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development. Kathryn Smith reported plans for an open submission process, thirty selected works and displays of the originals. Her contemporary account also questioned the clarity of the initial publicity and explained organisers' clarifications about reproduction permissions and artists' royalties. The report documents the proposal, not confirmation that every planned element occurred.