Hank Willis Thomas / Africans in America

Goodman Gallery is pleased to announce Africans in America, a three-part project curated by Hank Willis Thomas. The focus of the project is on artists who are African immigrants or first generation Americans of African parents living in the United States. Africans in America will launch in 2015 and alternate between Goodman Gallery spaces in Johannesburg and Cape Town leading up to the Gallery’s 50th anniversary in 2016. Thomas is a photo-conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to identity, history and popular culture. He has a longstanding interest in the strains and connections between Africa, America and related notions of diaspora and home.

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.

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Moshekwa Langa At IFA Berlin

Moshekwa Langa’s site-specific work The Jealous Lover opened at ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (Institute for Foreign Cultural Relation) in Berlin on 10 July 2014. The Jealous Lover describes the hope for a better life in the metropolis, a hope which “captures, captivates and grips” people like jealousy. The exhibition has travelled to Berlin after having its debut at ifa Stuttgart and runs until 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.

Hasan & Husain Essop Launch SBYA Show

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 this July. 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. The exhibition is currently running at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum in Port Elizabeth, and will then travel to Durban, Cape Town, Bloemfontein and Johannesburg.

Subotzky & Waterhouse At Fomu

Following on from its debut at Le Bal in Paris, Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse’s exhibition Ponte City opened at FoMU in Anwerp on 27 June 2014. The exhibition is the last and epic project by Subotzky and Waterhouse focussed on this single Johannesburg building. Ponte City has been the symbol of prosperity under apartheid and white supremacy, of the collapse of the city center in the 1990s, and finally of the multi-ethnic renewal in this new century: it has witnessed the throes of a never-ending changing society. The exhibition runs until 11 September 2014.

Hank Willis Thomas in Sugar Hill

Work by Hank Willis Thomas features within a new project by the organisation No Longer Empty titled If You Build It. The project takes root in Sugar Hill – the legendary epicenter of the Harlem Renaissance and is presented in partnership with Broadway Housing Communities at their newest site, designed by architect David Adjaye. Reflecting an integrated approach to housing and architecture, the project forges connections between art, architecture, community, and activism. The exhibition address cycles of urban decay and regeneration; building community through shared heritage; immigration and displacement. The exhibition runs at the corner of 155th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue in Sugar Hill, New York City until 10 August 2014.

Various Artists At Standard Bank Gallery

From Sitting to Selfie: 300 years of South African Portraits at Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg maps the long tradition of portraiture and its changing use and function in society. The exhibition, which opened to the public 25 June 2014, features work by Candice Breitz, Willem Boshoff, Hasan & Husain Essop, David Goldblatt, Haroon Gunn-Salie, Robert Hodgins, William Kentridge, Brett Murray, Walter Oltmann, Mikhael Subotzky, Minnette Vári and Diane Victor amongst others. From 19th century oil paintings to 21st century video installations, the exhibition raises many interesting questions about how and why people make portraits of themselves and others, and how the reasons for this have changed over time. The exhibition runs until 6 September 2014.

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.

Chiurai Kudzanai Shortlisted For Future Generation Art Prize

Chiurai has been shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize. Established by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, the Prize is a major contribution to the open participation of younger artists in the dynamic cultural development of societies in global transition.

Mounir Fatmi / The Kissing Precise

A new edition of The Kissing Precise – an artist book bringing together recent work by Mounir Fatmi including Casablanca Circles, The Death of the Straight Lines, Kissing Circles – was released in June 2014. These artworks find common ground in their reference to the poem written by Frederick Soddy The Kiss Precise. This book was published by the Editons La Muette – Au bord de l’eau in English and French.

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.

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.

Various Artists At Yale

Contemporary Art/South Africa at Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, USA opened on 09 May 2014 and features more than 30 artworks produced in South Africa or by South Africans from the late 1960s to the present, a period of immense political and social change. The artists in this exhibition – including William Kentridge, Sam Nhlengethwa, Mikhael Subotzky, Diane Victor, Sue Williamson – address key aspects of the experiences of South Africans, offering multiple perspectives on their lives, their society, and their world. The exhibition runs until to 24 August 2014.

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.

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.

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.