William Kentridge / Drawings: East Rand Proprietary Mines Cash Book / 2014
The exhibition consists of approximately 45 landscape drawings, mainly made from mining landscapes around Johannesburg.
The drawings are made on the pages of an old cash book from East Rand Proprietary Mines from 1906 (with a few from other mine ledgers), in which the text under the drawings, either covered or glimpsed, is an important part of the history of the drawing. What is hidden by the landscape? What traces are left in the landscape by the actions upon it? In what way does nature reclaim this damaged ground and erase its history?
The drawings were done over a three year period, and range from the East Rand to the platinum belt. Accompanying the exhibition is a launch of a book which reproduces the drawings and includes a text by Rosalind Morris, Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. Part detective story, part archival history, part anthropological reverie, Morris’s text reads between the lines to find evidence of the vast webs that linked South Africa to other parts of Africa, China, the United States, and Australia in an early moment of the globalizing economy.
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About
William Kentridge
William Kentridge (b.1955, South Africa) is internationally acclaimed for his drawings, films, theatre and opera productions.
Kentridge’s work is held in collections including MoMA, New York; Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; Guggenheim, Abu Dhabi and Zeitz MoCAA, Cape Town.
Kentridge’s largest UK survey to date was held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2022. In the same year Kentridge opened another major survey exhibition, In Praise of Shadows, at The Broad, Los Angeles. In 2023 this exhibition travelled to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Kentridge’s work has been seen in museums across the globe since the 1990s, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Albertina Museum, Vienna: Musée du Louvre in Paris, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; Reina Sofia museum, Madrid, Kunstmuseum in Basel; and Norval Foundation in Cape Town. The artist has also participated in biennale’s including Documenta in Kassel (2012, 2002,1997) and the Venice Biennale (2015, 2013, 2005, 1999, 1993).
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