The Poetry In Between

”On or about December 1910 human character changed,” Virginia Woolf observed. If this was true of 1910 then it was certainly true too of 1960 and in particular of South Africa’s character.  Before that year apartheid was drifting towards

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Visitors to Penny Siopis’ retrospective ‘Time and Again’ at the National Gallery in Cape Town enter the Lieberman Room to be confronted by a majestic installation  filling the rectangular space between two grey columns, the floor and the ceiling

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If I am seriously addicted to anything, it is the weekly arrival of my New Yorker magazine, which I read almost cover to cover, leaving out (usually) the articles on obscure American politicians or on the failing fortunes of one or other sporting tea

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Glimmering whitely across the green lawn of Regents Park, a cathedral-like tent has been erected to house Frieze Masters for Frieze week, London’s frenzied annual October art fest. Day One is setup day. Crates from galleries around the world are

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On the 15th September 2014 Ms Refilwe Zulu of the Department of Arts and Culture signed a covering letter calling for curatorial bids for the South African pavilion at the next Venice Biennale, to be held from May 9 to November 22 2015. Here’s the li

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September 18, 2014I love the cartoon above from a recent New Yorker. It so beautifully skewers the pretension inherent in the way some artists (and critics) write about their work. And I specially love the way this dog is stretching his little paws t

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For non-South Africans, August 9, Women’s Day, is the anniversary of the 1956 march of 20 000 women on Pretoria to demand that women not be forced to carry passbooks.This year, there was another march, on a different issue, marked by the high

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Hey, Athi! I read in Grazia this week that you have been commissioned by Louis Vuitton to design a special tapestry for their Paris flagship store windows on the Champs-Elysee! Grazia’s pic of Athi-Patra RugaAt your last show at Whatiftheworld i

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One of the criticisms of the movie 12 Years a Slave was that every time director/artist Steve McQueen wanted to make a transition, he would cut to yet another shot of swathes of Spanish moss, the soft grey plant which seems to hang from almost every

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Cherry blossoms are busting out all over New York, and the best way to start gallery hopping in Chelsea is to have lunch at the Empire Diner on West 10th Street at 23rd.  This is my dear friend and ex boss from my New York advertising days, Joe

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Week One: Johannesburg, February 11Writer Matthew Krouse leans in to catch curator Okwui Enwezor’s every word at the press preview of  ‘The Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life’.  This mega exhibition

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February 16, 2014At the end of January, on one of those Book Lounge evenings which have become a fixture on the calendars of Capetonians, Brett Murray launched his eponymous monograph to a packed audience, introduced by cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro. A

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JANUARY Opening night visitors chat between two constructions by Serge Alain Nitegeka at the Stevenson Cape Town.In a new video, an animated William Kentridge is pursued through the pages of a book by a calligraphic version of himself. At the Go

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December 20,  2013In December 1989, two months before Nelson Mandela was released, I took the redoubtable activist Helen Joseph out to visit him in his house at the Victor Verster Prison, in Paarl. It was the first visit she had been allowed sin

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Sunday November 17, 2013RoseLee Goldberg in the NeueHouseIn New York, the 2013 edition of Performa is in full swing, with a packed programme of electrifying offerings which end on November 23. Johannesburg artist Nicholas Hlobo was scheduled to give

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An archival sports photo hanging in my bedroomat Alumni House, Macalester CollegeLast month, I was invited to Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota by Joanna Inglot, Professor of Art and Art History, to give a presentation on the way in which a

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It appears I have taken a sabbatical from writing the diary – the last entry was made mid August. That was before I went to Bern, Switzerland in the last week of August, where I spent an amazing 10 days with 12 young artists from all over the world a

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The rare touch of colour in the dual exhibitions of Simon Gush and Jo Ractliffe (above) at the Stevenson Cape Town is the red glass bauble caught between the halves of a   table top – a metaphor for dissension over a staff Christmas party. 

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This week was Nelson Mandela’s 95th birthday, and the nation and the world celebrated. It was heartwarming to learn from the press that his grandchildren said he was sitting up in his hospital bed and smiling.I thought back to 25 years ago, 1988, Mad

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At the recent Volta Art Fair, visitors taking the pink carpeted walkway into the interior could not escape reading this message: MY OTHER RIDE IS YOUR MOM.  Ed Young was at it again.  Volta runs concurrently to Art Basel, and focuses on up

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Venice is a city of fast appearances and even faster disappearances. A vaporetto will suddenly materialise out of what seemed an empty piece of lagoon and swoop down on the water ferry stop;  a hurrying person will disappear around a corner, but

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When struggle veteran Amina Cachalia died suddenly on the last day of January this year, South Africa lost one of the most charismatic and glamorous members of the struggle generation. It was all the more sad and upsetting because Amina had b

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Two weeks ago, I flew from blisteringly hot Johannesburg, where I had been shooting in Soweto for a new video installation piece with a film crew from Monkey Films to snowy Switzerland.I didn’t have a camera in Switzerland, so I used my old N

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It can be a mistake to take biographical information which appears on the internet as accurate.  I recently visited struggle veteran Vesta Smith (above) in her Noordgesig, Soweto home. On her wall, was a powerful and moving poem especial

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Joost Bosland sent me this pic of Penny Siopis’ name up in lights at the Prince Charles Cinema in London’s Leicester Square. As part of the events around mega art fair Frieze, where the Stevenson Gallery was showing for the first time, Penny was invi

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An army of tiny men are scaling Lady Gaga's naked body in a black and white poster for her new perfume looming above Times Square. It is mid September in New York, and I have just left the press conference for 'The Rise and Fall of Apartheid:

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