William Kentridge / Franz Schubert’s Winterreise at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence

William Kentridge’s Winterreise premiered Wiener Festwochen in Vienna June 2014, this was followed by several performances at the Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam can be seen at the Festival d’Aix en Provence until 17 July 2014. William Kentridge has created twenty-four animated films as a visual response to Franz Schubert’s famous twenty-four song cycle The Winterreise. This profoundly introspective song cycle depicts the wanderings of a spurned lover in a landscape of snow and ice, eventually descending to metaphysical depths as the winter journey ends in the presence of an old organ grinder. The South African artist William Kentridge has created his own imaginary visual journey with videos incorporating his signature animations, montages and collages, forming a poetic counterpoint to the interpretation of this masterpiece by the pianist Markus Hinterhäuser and eminent Lieder singer, baritone Matthias Goerne.

For more information click here

Hasan & Husain Essop at Grahamstown National Arts Festival

Recipients of the 2014 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Arts Hasan & Husain Essop present a new body of work titled Unrest at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. The exhibition addresses the notion of global unrest through the particular lens of young Muslims living in Cape Town, and features the twins’ characteristic large-scale photographic prints, as well as sculptural installations and video works. On show in Grahamstown until 13 July, the exhibition will subsequently travel to Port Elizabeth, Durban, Cape Town, Bloemfontein and Johannesburg.

Candice Breitz in Houston

Candice Breitz’s trilogy titled The Woods opened at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston on 1 June 2014. The Woods traverses three continents to explore the rituals and conventions governing the on camera and off-camera personae of professional child actors, as well as adult actors who have become famous playing child roles. The trilogy brings together footage shot in Los Angeles, Mumbai and Lagos, seeking to observe and grasp the aspirational logic that is shared by Hollywood, Bollywood and Nollywood. The exhibition runs until 6 September 2014.

William Kentridge / 2nd Hand Reading Book Launch / Joburg Art Fair

Goodman Gallery Publications will present William Kentridge’s book 2nd Hand Reading  (published by Fourthwall Books, 2014) at the Joburg Art Fair. The book reproduces faithfully Kentridge’s drawings made for the animated flip-book film Second-hand Reading , which was constructed from the successive filming of drawings on the pages of old books; a second-hand reading of those books. Both the  film and the book are both about narrative— they start at the beginning and eventually get to the end— but also acknowledge repetition, inconsistency and illogicality as part of their material. 

The film Second-hand Reading and a selection of drawings made for the film will be shown at the launch, which includes a book-signing.
Music for the film was composed and made by the Cape Town based composer Neo Muyanga.

Kudzanai Chiurai Nominated for Discovery Award

Kudzanai Chiurai has been nominated for the 2014 Discovery Award at Rencontres d’Arles by Azu Nwagbogu, founder and director of the African Artist’s Foundation in Lagos, Nigeria. Chiurai’s work will be exhibited along with works by the nine other nominees at the Parc des Ateliers in Arles from 7 – 21 September 2014.

Broomberg & Chanarin at Fundación Jumex

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin’s Dodo is currently on show at the experimental exhibition space Galeria Jumex, Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico. Part archival research, archeological excavation, and montage, the exhibition takes as its starting point the discovery of previously unseen offcuts from the film Catch-22 in the vaults of Paramount Pictures. On show until 19 October 2014.

Sue Williamson at Iziko Slave Lodge

There’s Something I Must Tell You is an extended exhibition of work by Sue Williamson focusing on women activists involved in the political struggle against apartheid in South Africa. The exhibition spans five rooms at the Iziko Slave Lodge in Adderley Street, Cape Town and three separate bodies of work by the artist, including the 2013 video installation There’s something I must tell you, recently acquired by Iziko Museums with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation in New York. On show until June 2015.

Nontsikelelo Veleko at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Nontsikelelo Veleko’s work is included in the exhibition Africa Now: Fashioning Personhood at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota. Organized to mark the opening of MIA’s newly redesigned African galleries, the exhibition invites visitors to make connections between past and present perspectives found in the art of the African continent and the diaspora. The exhibition is on view until 3 August 2014.

Various artists at the Walther Collection in Ulm

Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive brings into dialogue various documents from the late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century and recent photographic and video work by contemporary artists engaged with photographic archives, to offer new perspectives on the legacy of anthropological and ethnographic visions of Africa. The exhibition, curated by Tamar Garb, is on view at the Walther Collection in Ulm, Germany until 2015, and features work by Candice Breitz, Kudzanai Chiurai, David Goldblatt, and Sue Williamson. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by Steidl.

William Kentridge / Fortuna / opening Medellin 30 July 2014

William Kentridge’s first large-scale solo exhibition in South America, Fortuna, has been travelling since October 2012. This extensive retrospective – conceived in close collaboration with the artist and designed especially for this tour – highlights Kentridge’s unique artistic process rather than focussing on a particular theme. The exhibition features six to seven rooms or sections comprising works ranging from 1989 to 2012. The retrospective has travelled to Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS) in Rio de Janeiro, Fundaçao Ibere Camargo (FIC), Porto Alegre, Pinacoteca Do Estado De Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo. Museo de Arte del Banco de la Republica, Bogota. It will run at Museo de Arte Moderno, Medellin from 30 July to 03 November 2014.