Photographer Guy Tillim is currently exhibiting his series, titled Libreville, at the Stevenson Gallery in Johannesburg. Percy Zvomuya from the Mail & Guardian caught up with him to discuss his latest work.

Zvomuya compared Libreville to Tillim’s Avenue Patrice Lumumba series, in which he spent time “photographing streets in six African states that are named after the slain hero”. The exhibition is running until April 19.

In terms of genealogy, one could say that Guy Tillim’s new exhibition Libreville has a sibling in Avenue Patrice Lumumba, his work from a few years ago. Both reference the same geographic region, countries watered by the Congo River, states without whose contributions a word like kleptocracy wouldn’t mean much.

For Avenue Patrice Lumumba, Tillim worked on a simple yet fascinating idea: going around photographing streets in six African states that are named after the slain hero. The streets are in Angola, Benin, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Madagascar and Mozambique. But Tillim said this work owes much to the lessons he learnt while photographing landscapes in the South Pacific and São Paulo.

• Complete article: Mail & Guardian

Book details

• Avenue Patrice Lumumba by Guy Tillim
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  EAN: 9783791340661
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Zanele Muholi was in Geneva to present her documentary film Difficult Love at the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights. The film was a way for Muholi to document the lives and daily struggles of black lesbians in South Africa. The film also looks at family life, and how the families of black lesbians relate to them.

At a Q&A session at the festival Muholi talked about “curative” rape of black lesbian women in South African. She said her wish is that others in same-sex relationships will be given an opportunity to be out, and to be free.

• Not playing? Watch on Livestream

Book details

• Zanele Muholi: Faces and Phases by Zanele Muholi, edited by Michael Stevenson, Federica Angelucci
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  EAN: 9783791344959
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Street artist Faith47 was recently in Hawaii for Pow Wow 13, “a gathering of contemporary artists that engages with broader community in the process and creation of art”.

The websites Arrested Motion and This is Colossal have shared photographs of Faith47′s mural, titled “The Silence Before”:

• View more photos at Arrested Motion and at This is Colossal

Book details

• Faith47 by Faith47
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  EAN: 9783937946085
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TIME Magazine’s Lightbox has featured South African photographer Zanele Muholi. In an interview with Paul Moakley, Muholi talked about mapping a project that can now be used as a visual and artistic reference of South Africa’s black lesbians.

She said that her Faces and Phases project “is basically about celebrating the lives of the people around me, and commemorating those who have since passed due to disease or hate crimes.” Faces and Phases is currently on view at the Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York City until April 6th.

“Siyafana is a word that means ‘we are the same’ in Zulu, and encompasses both the similarities and the differences within our ‘black’ race,’” says South African-born photographer Zanele Muholi, describing the central theme of her project, Faces and Phases. Muholi began work on Faces in 2006 after photographing two close friends who died at a young age. Both died from HIV-related illnesses; one of them had been the victim, in multiple incidents, of hate crimes. With Faces and Phases, Muholi hopes to broaden and deepen the visual representation of black lesbians in present-day South Africa — a visual history of a community that, she feels, has been too-long ignored not only by the country’s media, but by the larger gay rights movement that first flourished in her country in the 1990s.

• Complete article: TIME Magazine

Book details

• Zanele Muholi: Faces and Phases by Zanele Muholi, edited by Michael Stevenson, Federica Angelucci
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9783791344959

David Krut Projects and In Camera Art Publications cordially invite you to the book launch and exhibition opening of Johannesburg: Architecture and Heritage by Patrick de Mervelec.

The exhibition will be opened by Her Excellency Mrs Elisabeth Barbier, Ambassador of France in South Africa, and acclaimed architect Fanuel Motsepe will deliver the opening address. Taking place at David Krut Projects in Parkwood the event starts at 12:00 PM.

See you there!

Event Details

• Date: Saturday, 09 March 2013
• Time: 12:00 PM
• Venue: David Krut Projects
  142 Jan Smuts Avenue
  Parkwood
  Johannesburg | Map
• Guest Speaker: Fanuel Motsepe

Book Details

• Johannesburg: Architecture and Heritage by Patrick de Mervelec, Clive Chipkin
  Book Homepage
  EAN: 9780620554930
  Buy now from David Krut Publishing!

 
Award-winning artist Wim Botha will be opening his newest exhibition at this year’s Woordfees festival in Stellenbosch.

On Friday 1 March Botha will unveil Solipsis V at the SASOL Art Musuem. Lise van Robbroeck will speak at this special occasion.

The exhibition runs until 27 April 2013.

See you there!

Event Details

• Date: Friday, 01 March 2013
• Time: 6:30 PM for 6:30 PM
• Venue: SASOL Art Museum
  52 Ryneveld Street
  Stellenbosch | Map
• Guest Speaker: Lise van Robbroeck

Book Details

• Wim Botha: Standard Bank Young Artist 2005 by Sophie Perryer
  Book Homepage
  EAN: 9780620344407
  Buy now from David Krut Publishing!

 
Zanele Muholi’s work is part of an art symposium in New York organised by the Walther Collection, where it can be seen in one of the three-part exhibitions, called “Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive”.

The exhibition was discussed at the museum’s photography space by social and cultural analyst based at New York University, Awam Amkpa. He described Muholi’s photography as blurring “distinctions between periods, genders, and sexualities in their contemporary reimaginings of colonial portraiture”. ArtInfo and The Guardian’s Africa Network both published reviews of the exhibition:

Last night Awam Amkpa, an associate professor of drama and of social and cultural analysis at New York University, addressed a packed gallery at German photography museum the Walther Collection’s Chelsea project space, which is currently hosting the middle show in its three-part exhibition series “Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive.” Amkpa discussed works by African photographers included in the show and others through the lens of Europeans’ ethnographic photography of the continent, and analyzed how today’s artists have appropriated that colonizing discourse in empowering and productive ways.

• Complete article: ArtInfo

Photography from and about Africa is gaining interest and scholarship, judging from the turnout at the symposium Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive, held recently in New York. Organised by the Walther Collection, the symposium builds on their current three-part exhibition, of the same name, curated by Tamar Garb.

• Complete article: The Guardian

Book details

• Zanele Muholi: Faces and Phases by Zanele Muholi, edited by Michael Stevenson, Federica Angelucci
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9783791344959
  Buy now from David Krut Publishing!

Images courtesy The Guardain

Colin Richards, professor at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town and author of Taxi 012: Sandile Zulu, passed away on 26 December 2012.

Sean O’Toole from the Mail & Guardian, Robyn Sassen from the Sunday Times and Sue Williamson from artthrob have written about Richards’ contribution to the art world as an artist, academic and lecturer:

In his top floor office at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, on a rectangular desk adjacent to a locked bookshelf filled with his cherished Samuel Beckett books, Colin Richards — the prematurely deceased artist, educator, scholar and humanist — kept a stuffed parrot. It was a gift from Pippa Skotnes, a colleague and fellow professor in the University of Cape Town’s art faculty, which he joined in 2010 after 24 years at the University of the Witwatersrand.

• Complete article: Mail & Guardian

Professor Colin Richards, considered to be among South Africa’s most forthright voices in art criticism, has died aged 58, the result of complications after slipping in the shower in his Cape Town home eight days previously.

• Complete article: Sunday Times

It is a with great sadness but also in a spirit of celebration of a life of extraordinary achievement that I write this obituary for Professor Colin Richards, one of the South African art world’s brightest luminaries. Richards was a distinguished and visionary writer, an exquisite artist, and the hugely popular professor of art discourse at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town. He was also a close and valued friend.

• Complete article: artthrob

Book details

• Sandile Zulu by Colin Richards
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780958468879
  Buy now from David Krut Publishing!

Roelof Petrus van Wyk’s Jong Afrikaners series will be exhibited at the Jack Bell Gallery in London in March.

Van Wyk will be at the exhibition on 3 March for a book signing:

• Jong Afrikaner Facebook Page

Book details

• Jong Afrikaner: A Self-Portrait by Roelof Petrus van Wyk
  EAN: 9780986985089

• Buy now from David Krut Publishing!

The Social Landscape Project, a photographic exhibition of works by leading South African and French photographers on land and landscape in South Africa, is currently on at the Bus Factory in Newton. The six featured South African photographers are Zanele Muholi, Santu Mofokeng, Pieter Hugo, Jo Ractliffe, Cedric Nunn and Thabiso Sekgala. The photographs will be on display until 15 March.

In this, the 100th year since the historic 1913 Land Act, The Social Landscape project is currently running at the Bus Factory and The Photo Workshop Gallery until 15 March. At the Bus Factory is the collaborative exhibition Transition, a photography exhibition of works by leading South African and French photographers on land and landscape in South Africa. The Photo Workshop Gallery features the Land Resource Centre, an interactive space presenting a web interface exploring the history of land and landscape imagery in South Africa, a collection of books from the Photo Workshop library as well as a text based response by artist Nolan Dennis.

• Complete article: Market Photo Workshop

Book details

• Zanele Muholi: Faces and Phases by Zanele Muholi, edited by Michael Stevenson, Federica Angelucci
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9783791344959
  Buy now from David Krut Publishing!

• As Terras do Fim do Mundo by Jo Ractliffe
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780620485517
  Buy now from David Krut Publishing!

• Cedric Nunn: Call and Response by Cedric Nunn
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9783775732505
  Buy now from David Krut Publishing!

• TAXI-004: Santu Mofokeng by Sam Radithlalo, Santu Mofokeng
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780620279499
  Buy now from David Krut Publishing!

• This Must be the Place by Pieter Hugo
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9783791346892
  Buy now from David Krut Publishing!