Corrigall & Co: African art market specialists

During the 12-day HEAT arts festival in Cape Town's city centre from July 11 to 21, there will be numerous events designed to bring audiences in closer contact with artists and their motivations and unique perspectives. This is your chance to come to grips with the interests of our future art stars. Book your place on Quicket.

On 13 July, 10am HEAT Festival Director, Mary Corrigall will introduce artists, Songezo Zantsi at Vela Projects, Nina Kruger (pictured above) at the AVA and Nazeer Jappie at 99 Loop.


For late sleepers there is a 12pm event on Saturday 13 July led by HEAT curator Nkgopoleng Moloi, who will unpack the motivations of Thando Phenyane at Ebony/Curated, Charity Vilakazi at Kalashnikovv and Desire Marea at Ecletica Contemporary, whose paintings will debut at that gallery.


Later that Saturday 13 July at 2pm is a delightful afternoon of art with wine and snacks hosted by the charming art dealers Christopher Moller and Jaco Claasen, who will introduce three of the exceptional artists with works in their exhibition, Transcending Boundaries.

This winter in Cape Town will be different. The rain will fall, and the wind will blow but over 12 days in July the city centre will feel some HEAT. Fifteen art exhibitions tailored to respond to the ‘Common Ground’ theme will take the edge off the cold weather, especially if you join one of our walkabouts that take place almost daily… Nights will be spent huddled in a theatre, church or gallery, taking in an opera, cabaret or theatrical one-hander.
You need to go to Quicket… quick, quick and book, book. See link in bio or visit: www.heatfestival.org

Embrace the future of creativity in the arts at HEAT Festival, which is focussed on presenting works by young artists. From 11-21 July, HEAT Festival offers a dynamic programme of 15 art exhibitions, as well as theatre works, opera, jazz, and dance workshops, aiming to celebrate community and up-and-coming creative talents.
Here's a sneak peek at some of the works on the exhibition programme produced by rising artists;

1. Thando Phenyane - EBONY/CURATED
Image: The Wild Zulu 2, 2024.
2. Kylie Wentzel - Kalashnikovv
Image: A QUIET PLACE TO ARGUE, 2023.
3.Naisula - AVA
Image: Duara, 2022.
4. Tony Gum - Christopher Moller
Image: Milk the Bok, 2021



HEAT ignites a passion for the arts this Winter by spotlighting Cape Town's young creative talents. In the heart of Cape Town's CBD, from 11 – 21 July, HEAT Festival presents 14 art exhibitions, as well as an array of theatre performances, live opera and jazz and dance workshops which are certain to warm your bones this chilly season!
Celebrating the journey of some of our emerging creatives, here is a sneak peek of the fresh new voices in our live programme. Tickets have started selling make sure you don’t miss out… don’t wait for young cultural producers to make it big before you support their work… SUPPORT RISING ARTISTS NOW!!!

1. Andi Colombo - I want to write you a submarine. Shows at the Wave Theatre 13 July at 6pm
(Image by Nardus Engelbrecht.)
2. Sophie Joans - AÏo - Shows at the Wave Theatre 12 July at 6pm
(Image by Nardus Engelbrecht.)
3. Pichi Keane - Freshly Squeezed - Shows at Wave Theatre on 18 July at 8.30pm
Image: Pichi Keane at Ripe n Ready (image by Alan Eason.)
4. UCT Opera presents Three Tenors - Shows at the Spin Gallery at 21 July at 3pm
Image: Luvo Maranti and Vuyisa Zipu, supplied by UCT Opera.
5. Operation Khataza - a seven piece Jazz band play on the opening night 11 July at 8pm and 20 July at 6pm at the beautiful atmospheric Central Methodist Mission on Burg Street.

Let HEAT Festival help ward off the cold this Winter! With 14 exhibitions to attend from July 11 you can keep warm walking between all the participating galleries in Cape Town’s CBD.
HEAT Festival is centred around fostering community in the arts, with our theme; Common Ground, aiming to show the transformative power of art to bring people together, inspire critical dialogues, and foster empathy and understanding.
Here's a sneak peek at some of the captivating exhibitions waiting for you… and there’s lots more to come
1.) Eclectica Gallery: Baddies of Isandlwana is a solo exhibition by transdisciplinary artist and musician Desire Marea which imagines the lives of q***r Zulu soldiers during the Anglo-Zulu War. Image: Ungasabi, 2024, acrylic on canvas.
2.) Christopher Moller Gallery, Transcending Boundaries. A highlight of this show will be new works exhibited by seminal 90-year-old Ghanaian painter Ablade Glover. Image: Ablade Glover, People Scene.
3.) Vela Projects, Iyabulela Ilali. Songezo Zantsi presents a series of paintings depicting his experience attending a traditional Xhosa wedding in the Transkei. Image: Songezo Zantsi, Silapha, 2023, oil on canvas.
4) Kalashnikovv, The Botanic Gardens. A solo exhibition by Kylie Wentzel which portrays the Durban Botanic Gardens, Durban's oldest public space, as a community hub of playful interactions, connections and juxtapositions. Image: Kylie Wentzel, GROOMSMEN AT THE BOTANIC GARDENS, 2023.
5.) Nel Gallery, Pride and Prejudice. Toscaneena is an artistic duo that explores their bodies through a shared camera lens. Image: Toscaneena, Pride and Prejudice 3.
6) 99 Loop, Common Ground. This gallery presents a group exhibition comprising a single self-portrait by each participating artist. Image: Ilene Bothma, Shade, 2021.

You're invited to join the panel discussion, "Custodians of the Inner City: The Role of Creatives and Creative Interventions," happening at 12:30pm – 1:30pm on Sunday, May 26th, at Victoria Yards. This event explores the role of creative and innovative thinking in addressing the complex social and economic issues in Johannesburg's inner city. Jozi, with its rich cultural diversity, faces unique urban challenges. However, creative thinkers and innovative projects are leading the way in transforming the cityscape. The panel aims to dive into the roles of artists, designers, and other creatives in tackling these challenges, showcasing inspiring stories of collaboration and breakthrough solutions. We've assembled a group of esteemed panellists who bring diverse perspectives to the discussion:

Robbie Brozin from Jozi my Jozi, an advocate for urban renewal through creativity
Tanya Zack, co-author of “Wake Up,This is Joburg” and planner specialising in urban policy, regeneration, informality and sustainable development.
Heather Dodd, an architect with extensive experience in urban development
Mary Corrigall, an acclaimed journalist, and art critic, who will moderate the conversation
Melusi Mhlungu from Jozi my Jozi, is the highly regarded Founder and Chief Creative Officer of We Are Bizarre.

The solo section of ought attract an award for the most impressive body of works. The competition would have been stiff this year, but only one booth presented breathtaking works of such refinement. The vivid, warm palette and controlled lines belie, a heavy personal loss that was beyond the artist’s control. In this way it speaks to the value of labour and the pursuit of the perfection of form, an immersion in colour and line, as a ballast in the face grief. is such an exceptional artist.

Few of contemporaries have managed to transition their practice through different mediums without compromising the integrity of their art and remaining relevant through decades. Ixhegwana (2023) showing booth evinces a satisfying distillation of a language that remains alive.

A few weeks ago I spoke to artists from beyond our shores - Spain, India and Mexico - whose art will feature to discover what compelled them to make art, and what it’s like working as artists in their respective countries. Barcelona-based Rita Sala, whose art is defined by suspended bodies is fascinated by the physical and psychic act of falling. Maria Sosa from Mexico uses dyes for her textile works that are extracted from trees that played a fundamental role in the colonial era. Having grown up in an industrialised city in India, with no access to a park, Manjot Kaur was blown away by the impact of forests in Canada. Her art charts not only her reconnection to nature, but trees are represented as the main protagonists. “Why can’t you fall in love with a tree?” She observed. Read the feature in today’s Sunday Times.

Not a lot going on in Joburg’s art scene. All the dealers have packed up their exciting works to bring to Cape Town for the next week. New works by Joburg exhibition titled Promise of Paradise are compelling and signal a pleasing turn in the artist’s practice. The pattern overlay that forms a sheath through which archival imagery shines holds the composition and histories together and suspends the image at the boundary between figuration and abstraction.

Reinterpreting, revisiting, reconfiguring or recreating archival photographic images is one of the dominant modes of expression at the recent Michaelis Art School graduate exhibition. It was interesting to observe the range of approaches; from small interventions, such as cutting out the eyes of the subjects, to reworking the surface of the image, adding a layer of what appeared like frost or calcification or playing with scale, by enlarging the image beyond its intended scale as if hidden details could be revealed in this process. One artist, Georgie Clark, dialled back to the origins of photography, using lenses and light and leaving the shutter open for hours.

Coincidentally, I penned a feature for Latitudes Online on a range of artists working with collaged photographic images in their practice. In it, I explored the myriad of motivations underpinning this interesting turn in 'contemporary' African art. Click link in bio to read or visit: https://www.corrigall.org/post/rise-of-photographic-collage-an-approach-to-digital-and-analogue-archives

Images;
1) Tshedimoso Phetlhe
2) Kaycee Young
3)?
4) Mitchell Engel
5) Haeun Kim
6) Marcell Lombaard

The line dividing audiences from performers was challenged in a number of works at this African Dance Biennale in Maputo last week. It ranged from a demure self-consciousness, references to them or stepping off the stage and asking them questions - such as in his work Deus nos Acudi. (pictured above in Black Circus) went all out, flinging their naked body into the audience and making some of them perform in costume on the stage. This sharpened the tension between the audience for this festival which despite it’s African setting was mostly geared for European-based programmers looking for African content. Does this device empower the performer or exorcise the privilege or colonial baggage tied to the audience?

Maputo is littered with abandoned or decaying mansions. It has me thinking about the impermanence of architecture, culture and power. A perfect context in a way to attend a contemporary dance biennale and to meditate on a art form defined by its fleeting existence and the residue of power on the body.

“Blue is the colour of distance,”says during walkabout of her exhibition “Something about this place” Yet belying the sense of calm and distance of her indigo blue works, is a desire to bring viewers closer to the invisible layers of histories that are in plain sight.

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 Cairo, and lives and practices there and indeed the sense of chaos that defines the compositions of her abstract paintings could represent the erosion of democratic values, political order and worsening social conditions in her native country.

However, two qualities of her art stand in the way of geographically defining it. Not only did her time living in London shift her language and set her on the path she is on now, but her interpretation of the body in her art resonates with how many high-profile female artists – from Christina Quarles to Wangetchi Mutu, to Louise Bonnet – are representing the female form. Yet it would also be an oversimplification of Baraka’s art to zone in on qualities that it might share with other female artists. She does not directly depict the female form, albeit her treatment of the body in her art – as distorted and disembodied – denies objectification, and the male gaze, and aligns with how female artists are representing it. Chiming in with current attitudes where gender fluidity is being advanced, the human body in her art is genderless.

Read my feature for on this remarkable Egyptian Artist Nada Baraka by clicking here: https://editorial.latitudes.online/blog/posts/is-abstraction-the-route-to-escaping-geography-and-gender/

Image: Nada Baraka in her studio. courtesy the artist

Ecletica Contemporary opted to embrace the Women’s Month-themed wave that typically ripples across the cultural scene in August. The title of the exhibition, Incantation, which was said to be inspired by the Latin roots of the word, referring to the “art of enchanting”, was intended to show how artists (female and non-binary) set out to “disrupt the dominant ways of seeing, thinking and being that inhibit one’s ability to reimagine, re-describe and reinvent” gendered perceptions.

The most obvious or direct disruption was realised by Hannelie Taute, who used bright threads and rubber motifs to obscure the faces of the subjects of vintage or archival images from what appears (based on the clothing) to be the Victorian era. Her incursions, shall we call them, onto these images parade a punk sensibility. With bright masks from ancient cultures covering the faces of the dated subjects, she summoned what could be deemed a cultural collapse.

These works tied in with the other photographic and video works in the exhibition referring to a performance facilitated by different kinds of masks we tend to associate with a female vocabulary of dress, colour and embellishment. Naturally, such devices should ordinarily “enchant” viewers, but they can do the reverse in the hands of artists.

Read my feature for Daily Maverick here: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-09-04-the-winter-of-arts-discontent/

Hannelie Tautes, ‘Last-night I was kissed by oh oh so handsome a man, said the princess’ (2022). (Photo: Courtesy Ecletica Contemporary)

You wouldn’t think that the art industry is a seasonal one, but in Cape Town, which relies so heavily on tourists and the swallows – foreigners who live in the city in summer – to keep it afloat, the winter months are somewhat of a cultural desert.

Cape Town winters are not for sissies. As any new resident here will discover, your status is measured in how many winters you have survived.

Not surprisingly, those dealers with the resources to head to Europe in summer and take part in fairs on that continent focus their energy on those events. For the top end of the art market – Goodman, Stevenson, Smac, Blank Projects – that meant Art Basel in June.

Some galleries closed for part of the season – THK gallery, which has a branch in Cologne, Germany, closed for refurbishments. The Deepest Darkest Gallery, in De Waterkant, may have closed for good. Their sign has gone and when this writer reached out to their director, Deon Redman, there was no response and therefore no confirmation whether they will reopen.

No one expects accidental visitors to the Woodstock galleries. Yet those galleries based in the city centre, in the Church Street art node – Eclectica Contemporary, Nel, AVA, World Art, 99 Loop, Ebony/Curated – are also quiet when you drop in. During the week, you are commonly the only person perusing the gallery. This is telling given the galleries here are in a busy hub and closer to tourist stomping grounds.

Visitor numbers to galleries in this area have not returned to pre-Covid figures, remarked Shamiela Tyer, founder of Eclectica.

In a feature for Daily Maverick I consider the impact of bad weather on the Cape Town Art Market. To read story click here: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-09-04-the-winter-of-arts-discontent/

I have always favoured novels that centre on unpicking fiction. It speaks of the author’s reluctance to buy into their own fabrications due to their allegiance to truth. evinces a commitment to truth in his art. He seeks out surfaces embedded with the traces of real life, extracting wall surfaces from spaces that bear traces of work - such as the car panel be**er shop that served as the source of the works at his current solo (second image). Despite his reverence for the real, he somehow harnesses the poetry of the ordinary; the textures and tones that evoke spaces beyond walls, summoning infinity even (see third image of the sea). This characteristic can be loosely applied to his calligraphy inspired works (first image taken in his studio at an event to mark its closing) which parade specifics that are also denied (blurred, abstracted letters) evoking a history that cannot be fully grasped. This work (pictured above) made in collaboration with like the others is anchored in the space and time it was made. It cements a time that two artists came together in a studio. I do love the end result. They are both archivists of a kind playing with the past, the truth.

Artist Bev Butkow is guided by a quote (from 1944) by Anni Albers, the Bauhaus era abstract textile artist, that reads:

“We learn to listen to voices: to the yes or no of our material, our tools, our time. We come to know that only when we feel guided by them our work takes on form and meaning, that we are misled when we follow only our will.”

In her practice she tries to connect to her materials (off-cuts from a local designer) physically, letting their ‘materiality’ guide the process. “I don't have an idea upfront. I'm trying hard to develop a collaborative relationship with my materials,” she explained to me. To read the feature click here: https://editorial.latitudes.online/blog/posts/tracing-the-threads-of-abstraction/

Image: Bev Butkow, Lines of Flight, Made with Heid Stroh, 2022, String, plastic cord, wooden slats, embodied traces of time/ labour/exertion/conversation/instruction. Image courtesy Bev Butkow, Guns & Rain, Anthea Pokroy

In the footsteps of Anatsui, Moffat Takadiwa doesn’t weave or produce traditional textiles – he tends to use disused mass-produced materials such as toothpaste bottles, and bottle tops from various products sold in his native Zimbabwe. Growing up in a rural setting, he didn’t have access to these items and “sees them as objects of leisure and class,” says Takadiwa, who recently staged his first and possibly largest museum exhibition, Vestiges of Colonialism, at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Harare. I interviewed him while the exhibition was staged and in service of a feature for Latitudes Online on Textile abstraction.

His practice remains closely tied to the Korekore weaving traditions in his country that were not only traditionally in the hands of women but were in everyday use by women. Not that Takadiwa has personal experience with this. Interestingly, despite growing up in a rural area, he was not raised to follow traditions. He says he grew up with a "conflict with culture" due to his father eschewing traditions – he opted out of being a chief and the coronation that would seal this status. Read the feature here: https://editorial.latitudes.online/blog/posts/tracing-the-threads-of-abstraction/

Image: Moffat Takadiwa, Bhiro ne Bepa (pen and paper), 2023, pen leftovers, computer keys and toothbrushes, image courtesy the artist and Nicodim Gallery

One of the less explored aspects of the so-called textile art movement/medium in African expression is an investigation into the use of abstraction and more precisely what artistic, conceptual or ideological value textiles activate via the use of this mode as opposed to say painting. This is despite the fact that artists working with a broad definition of textiles are similarly guided by their materials, the formal features of their works, intuition and, of course, a desire to escape linear or figurative narratives. Read my feature on this topic for Latitudes Online here: https://editorial.latitudes.online/blog/posts/tracing-the-threads-of-abstraction/

Image: Igshaan Adams Open Production at the A4 Arts Foundation in Cape Town, 2020. Courtesy of A4 Arts Foundation & Kunsthalle Zurich

Sculptures by Berto Lardera, the Italian artist, made in the late 50s on exhibition serve as a reminder that materiality is everything when it comes to three dimensional form but also the complexity of the silhouette.

Tomorrow at Wits University Origin’s Centre in Johannesburg I will be embarking on two firsts; joining an all female gathering of artists, art specialists and, given the theme (women’s labour) I will be reflecting on my own practice in a talk titled The female voice from opinions to facts, figuration to abstraction. It takes place from 4pm to 6pm.

Working with a photographic or filmic archive or copy & paste culture is a distinctive characteristic of the artists works showing The degree of ‘alteration’ varies from subtlety incorporating material in a painting, to reworking the imagery to the point of abstraction or to simply photographing a photograph. 1. Phumulani Ntuli 2. Kaelo Molefe 3. Jabulani Dhlamini 4. Lakin Ogunbanwo 5. Thato Toeba 6. Neo Matloga both 7. Banji Chona

Thanks to Greta Gerwig, director of the Barbie film, hot pink has in the realm of popular culture become a colour tinged with feminine power rather than symbolic of stereotypical gender repression. However, many South African artists have been reclaiming and re-engineering pink to articulate female agency or the constructs of whiteness.

In my recent feature for The Sunday Times I reflected on how artists employ or deploy pink in their art.

A new generation of female artists has emerged, whose art isn't dominated by pink. Rather, flashes of this hot tone are consistently woven into their often textile works. This almost announces that not only is the art the product of a female voice but one whose universes are tinged with a form of “cognitive dissonance” - the contradictory demands made on women under the patriarchy – a recognition of which, ironically, unlocked the Barbies from a male-dominated Kenworld. In this way, pink is almost the female 'glitch' in the fabric of reality.

This includes the likes of Michaela Younge, known for her wool and felt tableaux, Nabeeha Mohamed, whose recent show Vanitas Woe featured flashes of shocking pink and sculptures of shoes in this shade, as well as the likes of Talia Ramkilawan, who has used hot pink wool as a backdrop for presenting female q***r subjectivities.

Male artists dealing with gender norms and race, have also applied pink in their art with purpose. Such as Wonder Buhle, whose recent solo exhibition at BKhz largely presented paintings saturated in hot shades of pink, or Colijn Strydom, who tackles white male identity via stylised imagery by juxtaposing pinks with blues.

Pink is the new punk South African artists have been reclaiming and re-engineering perceptions of pink and ultimately the female universe, writes Mary Corrigall

When there is so much hype around an artist, your expectations increase. This might explain why Portia Zvavahera’s latest solo, Pane rima rakakomba, felt a little flat. The paintings were museum scale (probably the intended buyers) but I wasn’t blown away. I do love the intermingling of the human and the animal in her work and the way in which her subjects are suspended in these patterned bubbles, which could be bodies of water, a subterranean space or the sky, or the human body itself (the exhibition relates to the artist’s pregnancy). However, The scale of the works didn’t increase the visual impact. Was it the muted tones? I wanted a development, a progression from what I have seen before from this artist, though I do understand that she is compelled to deliver on her signature style.

Curators were always going to be absorbed into the art fair fray. This became inevitable from the mid-nineties to the mid-noughties when art fairs mushroomed around the world and overtook the prominence of Biennales as the primary events for the public to peruse contemporary art. Given curators have customarily operated in the institutional and non-commercial sides of the art world, their interventions or roles at art fairs are somewhat viewed as either part of the branding and hype or as mildly interesting flirtations with the art market.

Curators at art fairs: disruptors or validators? Curators were always going to be absorbed into the art fair fray. Nevertheless, it is difficult, if not impossible, to marry the curatorial act with commercial imperatives, given dealers need to make sales to recoup the costs of participating and staying in business.

It is impressive that Amoako Boafo has used his status to turn attention on the art scene in Accra. His demand that his inaugural Gagosian exhibition in New York also be followed by an edition with new works at his space .ateliers in Accra not only turns American collectors attention in that direction but also ensures that Ghanaians also get a look in on this landmark show. So often the most valued African art isn’t seen on the continent by the community which shaped it.

This is one of the works from the "It’s Pablo-matic: Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby" exhibition on at the Brooklyn Museum. Naturally, all the male art critics had a lot to say about the exhibition. In his Art News review Alex Greenberger claimed to be greatly bothered by “the show’s disregard for art history, the discipline that Gadsby studied, practiced, and abandoned after becoming frustrated with its patriarchal roots.”

Greenberger unwittingly touches on the irony of his critique. How is it possible for female or non-binary curators to show ‘regard’ for a history of art that has excluded womxn? A revisionist approach demands that curators eschew art history and steer a parallel path, which Gadsby, achieved by simply including many works by female artists – some of whom were active while Picasso making art - such as Käthe Kollwitz. I couldn't help but weigh in on the debate in a feature for Latitudes Online in which I ask what we do with misogynist male artists and critics? Read here: https://editorial.latitudes.online/blog/posts/what-do-we-do-with-misogynist-male-artists-does-the-brooklyn-museum-s-pablo-matic-show-plot-a-good-way-forward/