Articles

Valerie Kabov looks at the imperatives for new art fair business models in the changing art market through Latitudes' initiative of International Galleries Platform.

Art has always been deeply rooted in Mmakgabo’s cultural heritage, reflecting a profound reverence for the values that have shaped her upbringing and worldview

As an artist, it can be easy to get lost in your own world and overlook the importance of connecting with others. But promoting your art and drawing attention to what is special about it, is almost as important as creating it.

Latitudes engages in a compelling conversation with artist Adele van Heerden.

Nkgopoleng Moloi on engaging with auctions in ways that align with one's comfort levels.

Artists are using watercolour in ways that link them to a radical tradition.

The art world in 2024 is poised for a significant shakeup, marked by several key trends emerging from the tremors of 2023.

How has digital art evolved in the whirlwind time of the Internet, when years pass like decades.

Obásolá Bamigbola can pinpoint the place and time that he picked up a camera with purpose. This Lagos-based photographer had an affinity for image-making from a young age and when drawing and painting failed to satisfy, it was a camera that resonated with his artistic drive.

Contemporary art is often criticised for its gradual abandonment of visual coherence in favour of the abstract. In other words, contemporary art’s pretentious dimensions have expanded to include its explanations. This is art because it is art: we’re trapped in a tautological circle. Not only could a child have produced this, but words used to mean things, you know. The greater the waffle, the worse the art; right?

Le Guin tells us that fiction can be like the carrier bag, a receptacle for all sorts of incidentally found things, and I want to venture that the paintings included in Hedwig Barry’s solo exhibition, Unrest, on show at Guns & Rain until 27 October, do the same thing. They too are tools “that [bring] energy home”.

The contemporary condition is such that there are no longer any art movements – even if there are discernible aesthetic or conceptual qualities characterising the art finding favour.

Back in 2016, the South African artists William Kentridge and Bronwyn Lace came together to found a space committed to creating and supporting experimental, collaborative and cross-disciplinary arts projects.

My initiation into the world of Independent cultural production was a whirlwind affair, a rendezvous with the avant-garde Pool Space tucked away downtown on the corner of the ground floor of Ellis House back on the auspicious evening of March 15, 2015. The alchemical collision of minds behind this exhibition: Mandla Mlangeni - Jazz extraordinaire - and maestro of melodies, Shane Cooper, visionaries in their own right. This exhibition was woven into a series christened Starter Room.

Through the Glass, Sparkling delves deep into the multi-disciplinary practice of acclaimed South African artist, Frances Goodman, presenting a collection of stories, essays, and poems that intimately explore the central theme of mirrors and reflections.

You have to resist the urge to neatly locate Nada Baraka’s art in an Egyptian context. The thirty-three-year-old artist was born in, lives and practices in Cairo, and indeed the sense of chaos that defines the compositions of her abstract paintings could represent the city's erosion of democratic values, political order and worsening social conditions.

While collaborations between artists and fashion, furniture or homeware designers are not uncommon in South Africa, there remains some confusion and even skepticism around the extent to which the disciplines of contemporary art and design can and should overlap.

There is one artist whose works have remained divisive since they were unleashed onto the international stage in the early 1980s: Jean-Michel Basquiat.

One of the lesser explored aspects of textile art in African expression is an investigation into the use of abstraction. More precisely, what artistic, conceptual or ideological values textile art activate as opposed to, say, painting.

The art world has experienced a paradigm shift, with independent artists, disruptive curators, and marginalised individuals challenging established norms. However, reforms should be cautious of historical naivety and outdated practices.