Ashraf Jamal

Favourite group show: New Day @ Graham Contemporary

Favourite solo show: Jackson Hlungwani @ MOMO Outskirts

Favourite artist: Gaelen Pinnock

Favourite artwork: Bouquet No 2

Favourite Space: Louisiana Art Museum, Copenhagen

What I’d love to see in 2023: More Abstraction

What I’d love to see retired in 2023: The end of the Age of Anger

Barbara Rousseaux

Favourite group show: Waste Not Want Not at Shade

Favourite solo show: a retrospective of Cornelia Parker I saw at Tate Britain in July and Tracey Rose’s Shooting Down Babylon at Zeitz

Favourite artist: Helena Uambembe

Favourite artwork: Mafolofolo: a place of recovery (2022) by MADEYOULOOK

Favourite space: LAPA (Brixton, Joburg)

Quote of the year: “We are angry, we are sad, we are tired, we are united” by the lumbung community in a letter published on e-flux after documenta fifteen.

What I’d love to see in 2023: Heavily researched art practices and more open calls for written commissioned pieces.

What I’d love to see retired in 2023: Performances at art fairs.

Barnabas Ticha Muvhuti

Favourite group show: Does Exhibition Match count as a group show? I think so. That was really novel. Also I returned to Photo book! Photo-book! Photobook! numerous times. More photobook appreciation, yes please.

Favourite solo show: Definitely biassed, but Kamyar Bineshtarigh’s Uncover was such a special show to work on and it was brilliant to see Kamyar’s practice continue to develop and literally expand, plus Misha Krynauw’s review was lovely. Luvuyo Nyawose’s eBhish was/is monumental.

Favourite artist: Lunga Ntila forever. I still don’t have the words.

Favourite artwork: Inga Somdyala’s Tankwa Artscape Residency piece 4×4 Crop.

Favourite space: Super sad to have just left CPT before Under Projects opened but I’m so excited it exists. More in my current realm is the incredible Polycopies barge; I would live there with all the photobooks if I could.

Quote of the year: “A book is a conversation with a stranger in the future.” – Dayanita Singh, Aperture PhotoBook Review, 2022.

What I’d love to see in 2023: More temporal, non-commercial experiments that foster access and inclusion.

What I’d love to see retired in 2023: Overworked staff, underpaid artists, obnoxious collectors.

Fadzai Muchemwa

Favourite group show: When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting at Zeitz MOCCA, Cape Town.

Favourite solo show: Ledelle Moe’s Fold at SMAC, Cape Town.

Favourite artist: DuduBloom More

Favourite artwork: The Farmers by Tafadzwa Tega from the exhibition Autumn is Fresh.

Favourite space: BKhz Gallery

Quote of the year: “Could we show the stars that we are shining too?” From BKhz’s show If not now, then when?

What I’d love to see in 2023: I would love to see more engagement with communities where spaces operate that goes beyond art making.

What I’d love to see retired in 2023: Nothing.

Keely Shinners

Favourite group show: Anything curated by Heinrich Groenewald and Shona van der Merwe of Reservoir. They give me exactly what I want from a group show: each work is strong enough on its own to shine; gathered together, the group forms a chorus that harmonises. 

Favourite solo show: Inga Somdyala’s ‘ADAMAH’ curated by Reservoir at WHATIFTHEWORLD. As I wrote in my review, I am convinced that Somdyala is a messenger of mythological proportions. The way he is able to communicate between past and present, earth and spirit, soil and soul is nothing short of marvellous. Conceptually, I think his work is up there with the greats: Moshekwa Langa, Berni Searle, Dineo Seshee Bopape. He’s going places, I can feel it! 

Favourite artist: Warren Maroon. He blew me away first at Joburg Art Fair with a carpet embedded with tiny shards of broken glass. His solo exhibition at Church Projects lived up to its title – producing in me a feeling of reverence to which I thought I was immune. My friend Jonathan Goschen articulated so poetically exactly what it is that makes Warren’s work extraordinary. It has to do with the sand that can be found in the Cape Peninsula, where Warren and I both live. The sand is soft enough to the touch, but when the winds blow, it becomes sharp enough to cut you. These two tactile sensations — soft and sharp — and their accompanying associations — comfort and pain — are what make Warren’s work so visceral, so affecting. The fact that he often works with glass is not coincidental; glass is formed when sand becomes exposed to heat and pressure. Just as different ratios of heat and pressure produce different forms of glass, different ratios of political heat and economic pressure produce vastly different social atmospheres. Warren affects these different social atmospheres when he juxtaposes, say, a broken glass from brown bottles versus the green-tinted window glass of high-rise buildings. The poetry and the pain of this city – it’s all there in Warren’s work. 

Favourite artwork: Recency bias might be strong on this one, but I’m going to take a leap and say that my favourite artwork from this year was Gabrielle Guy’s An advent calendar of other people’s pictures. The fact that Gabi is hands down the best designer of art books in the country notwithstanding, this little booklet of images, peeled open once a day for twenty five days leading up the final page at Christmas, feels like such a precious object. The curiosity and care Gabi applies to forgotten and discarded images moved me to tears. As she put it, “I liked to think of myself as bestowing a new appreciation on these unwanted and orphaned images, giving them a home and value.” This sentiment strikes at the core of what makes art ‘art’: it gives objects, or images, a home and value. 

Favourite space: Under Projects! This space – run by Brett Seiler, Guy Simpson, Luca Evans and Mitchell Messina – is not the first, and certainly it’s not the last, artist-run project space around. What makes Under Projects special is that they really take the idea of the PROJECT seriously. Mitchell got a bunch of artists and friends to make sculptures of cars for the eponymous show, Sculpture of Cars. ArtThrob’s resident afropessimist genius Vusi Nkomo was joined by Rowan Smith and Fernando Damon in a two-day-long performance of post-modern, improvised, theory-heavy ambient music. Then Guy Simpson convinced Zander Blom, Dominique Cheminais, Kamyar Bineshtarigh, Nazeer Jappie, Inga Somdyala and Ed Young to paint mockups of their work on the wall, only to paint over them again in less than five days. If that doesn’t scream, “I don’t care about money; I just want to make cool shit,” I don’t know what does. 

Quote of the year: “Is this… kinky??” Ben Albertyn on Rehane Abrahams and Wynand Herholdt’s controversial BDSM-style performance in front of the Slave Lodge in his review of this year’s ICA Live Art Festival. 

What I’d love to see in 2023: Less grovelling for money, more making cool shit happen together.

What I’d love to see retired in 2023: 2022 saw the rise of what I like to call the “everything but the kitchen sink” show, so-called because, in these ambitious exhibitions, the curators pack the walls chock a block with seemingly every artwork they can think of to fit the theme. Zeitz did it twice, first with Tracey Rose, then with When We See Us. Iziko SANG’s 150 Year retrospective, although I loved it, is also guilty. ICA Live Art Fest is an example, if you substitute events on a programme for works on a wall. I fear that, in these shows that want to show everything, the messages the artworks want to tell us become muddled, and the viewer leaves the gallery feeling visually overloaded and emotionally overwhelmed. That’s a shame, because an incredible amount of research, care, time and money went in to putting these shows together. Now, I’m not a minimalist, but I am an editor; I look forward to seeing more carefully edited shows in 2023. 

Lumumba Mthembu

Favourite group show: The POWER Exhibition at Community ZA, Durban.

Favourite solo show: Mary Sibande’s Let Me Tell You about Red at Durban Art Gallery.

Favourite artist: Sabelo Mlangeni

Favourite artwork: Umnqwazi ka Tata, Tshepiso Mabula ka Ndongeni

Favourite space: Umhlabathi Collective on 2 Helen Joseph, Newtown, Johannesburg.

Quote of the year: “Never speak English in front of phambi kwabantu.” – Tshepiso Mabula ka Ndongeni on taxi etiquette

What I’d love to see in 2023: Lindokuhle Ndlovu breaking through with a big solo exhibition at an elite gallery.

What I’d love to see retired in 2023: Late starts. Please begin the show or exhibition at the advertised time for the sake of reviewers with multiple commitments.

Nkgopoleng Moloi

Favourite group show: Curators continue to be weird. Things have been interesting but nothing is a favourite.

Favourite solo show: Inga Somdyala’s ADAMAH at WHATIFTHEWORLD.

Favourite artist: Clementine Hunter. A small painting of hers is included in the group exhibition, When we see us, at Zeitz MOCAA.

Favourite artwork: Nolan Oswald Dennis, garden for fanon, 2021 and Warren Maroon, All That Glitters Is Gold, 2022

Favourite space: The internet. Some of the best art I’ve seen this year have been through viewing rooms – like Pace Gallery’s Living With Ghosts exhibition, Bob Thompson: This House Is Mine at Hammer Museum and Ruth Asawa: Citizen of the Universe at Modern Art Oxford.

Quote of the year: “Maybe an accelerated news cycle requires an accelerated art” – Olivia Laing

What I’d love to see in 2023: Less trends, more spirit, more soul and actually good technique.

What I’d love to see retired in 2023: Hopefully less “nice paintings that depict their subjects as ethically bright and good rather than erotically attractive.” (Drawing on Rosanna McLaughlin’s review on John Currin’s work in Art Review). 

Sean O’Toole

Favourite group show: Oh dear, I’m giving away my age here: Subscribe: Artists and Alternative Magazines, 1970–1995, at the Art Institute of Chicago. This historical show – featuring early magazine work by Liz Johnson Artur, Bill Cunningham, Nan Goldin, Peter Hujar, Jamel Shabazz and Wolfgang Tillmans, among others – explored how print magazines combining fashion, art and a bit of politics were incubators of talent.

Favourite solo show: I can’t decide between Zohra Opoku’s textile collages invested with runic properties, at Marian Ibrahim Gallery; Bonolo Kavula’s frail hanging things that fuse printmaking with weaving and sculpting, at Norval Foundation; Ben Stanwix’s uncanny sculptures framed by a fake historical incident, at 99 Loop; Jared Ginsburg’s erased letter paintings, at Blue Mountain School; or Brett Seiler’s affecting installation à la Fassbinder, at Everard Read  – so I’ll go for Unathi Mkonto’s Enclosed Camp, at OPEN 24 HRS.

Favourite artist: Unathi Mkonto. He reminds me of pop maestro Prince during his imperial 1980s pomp. “Life it ain’t real funky/ Unless it’s got that pop/ Dig it.”

Favourite artwork: Roméo Mivekannin’s La blanche et la noire, d’après Félix Vallotton (2022), a felicitous reworking of Félix Vallotton’s fin–de–siècle remake of a western standard. This arresting work carries a baton previously held by Beauford Delaney and Aaron Douglas, who appear with Mivekannin in When We See Us, Zeitz MOCAA’s pop-at-heart celebration of the black figure. 

Favourite space: Das kleine Grosz Museum, a tiny museum with a punning name devoted entirely to works by George Grosz that is located in a disused Shell fuel station in Berlin-Schöneberg.

Quote of the year: “Hlala phantsi, thula, thula … Honourable members, order. Order! … No, you can’t make reference to somebody being a liar here now.” Speaker of the National Assembly to MP during a parliamentary debate on 13 December 2022.

What I’d love to see in 2023: A locally originated museum survey for Moshekwa Langa. Hello! Anyone reading?

What I’d love to see retired in 2023: Blatancy. Brazenness. Barefacedness.

Setumo-Thebe Mohlomi

Favourite solo show: Mawande Ka Zenzile: Nqanda nanga’manzi engene’ndlini’

Favourite artist: Vivien Kohler

Favourite artwork: Untitled Gold work by Samson Mnisi

Favourite space: Counterspace

Quote of the year: “Do you know when you are angry to the point where you are crippled, you can’t do anything? I felt that I was liberated from that. I forgave myself a long time ago, that moment when I [realised] that I don’t have to feel pressured by anything. To a point where I did not see a need to feel vicitimised by anything.” Mawande Ka Zenzile.

What I’d love to see in 2023: Spaces and artists outside of the mainstream making a concerted effort at shifting the gaze.

What I’d love to see retired in 2023: Blackface, once and forever.

Sindi-Leigh McBride

Favourite group show: I See You: Virginia Chihota, Gideon Gomo, Masimba Hwati, Gareth Nyandoro And Portia Zvavahera, Tiwani Contemporary Lagos

Favourite solo show: Tracey Rose: Shooting Down Babylon, Zeitz MOCAA

Favourite artist: Hanna Noor Mahomed

Favourite artwork: Untitled (1995 – 1997), Robert Gober

Favourite space: Kunsthalle Bern

Quote of the year: “Write a little every day, without hope, without despair” – Isak Dinesen

What I’d love to see in 2023: work engaging with climate change (but not like corny recycled bottle caps, please not that)

What I’d love to see retired in 2023: attacking artworks to protest fossil fuels