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.
Reporting from Dak’Art in 2014, Basia Lewandowska Cummings followed the OFF programme through hospitals, restaurants, studios and other spaces beyond conventional galleries. Her C& review describes encounters with Issa Samb’s studio and digital-art activity at Kër Thiossane. It presents the sprawling fringe as a way of connecting artistic work with Dakar’s everyday life, while questioning who gains visibility through the biennial system.
Hrag Vartanian examines Kara Walker’s A Subtlety before its public opening at Brooklyn’s former Domino Sugar Factory. A monumental white sphinx and smaller sugar figures connect the installation to the industry’s reliance on enslaved labor. His review also considers the tensions surrounding the site’s planned redevelopment, asking how a tribute to exploited workers sits within the changing economics and cultural memory of Williamsburg.
Reviewing Gravity and Grace at the Brooklyn Museum, Maeve Gately examines El Anatsui’s large metal hangings and their capacity to change with each installation. The exhibition combined twelve monumental works with pieces in other materials. Her account connects the Ghanaian artist’s use of Nigerian liquor-bottle caps to West African histories of trade and consumption, while emphasizing the sculptures’ shifting surfaces and spatial presence.
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.
The National Gallery of Jamaica’s November 2012 announcement set out a biennial combining invited artists with a juried section open to Jamaican artists and artists living in Jamaica. Scheduled from December 9 to March 9, 2013, it also included tributes to recent Musgrave medal recipients Omari S. Ra, Bryan McFarlane and Ebony G. Patterson. Participants were eligible for the Aaron Matalon Award and consideration for acquisition awards.
Hyperallergic’s Claire Breukel considers Environment and Object: Recent African Art, a publication developed by curators Lisa Aronson and John S. Weber. She finds its attention to materials and artists’ social and ecological surroundings a useful alternative to familiar stereotypes. While valuing the historical context and an interview with Chika Okeke-Agulu, she questions the absence of contributors based at African universities among the book’s essay writers.
Rachel Wetzler reviews The Global Africa Project at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design, which brought together artists and makers connected to Africa and its diasporas. She praises the exhibition’s thematic pairing of textiles, furniture, photography and other forms for challenging artistic hierarchies. The review also questions its treatment of corporate branding and argues that its strongest achievement is resisting a single definition of African creativity.
In December 2010, the National Gallery of Jamaica announced a tribute exhibition to painter and printmaker Albert Huie, who had died earlier that year. Scheduled to open on December 30, the presentation drew from the national collection and covered work from the late 1930s to the late 1990s. The accompanying public gathering was to include poetry, music and participation by his daughter, Christine Huie-Roy.
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.