September has become Joburg’s unofficial art month. It promises a few gloriously overcommitted weeks in which galleries debut new shows, studios fling open their doors and perfectly sensible people find themselves drinking too much wine in strange CBD buildings.
At the heart of it all is FNB Art Joburg, back for its 19th edition from September 4–6. Radiating out from it is a constellation of exhibitions, performances, talks, museum shows and assorted cultural sparklies, stretching from Sandton and Rosebank to Braamfontein and the CBD.
This year, a good chunk of the action falls under Open City, FNB Art Joburg’s citywide programme, running from August 20 to September 14. Alongside exhibitions and studio visits are music, food, fashion, design, yoga, meditation and even a Red Bus art experience around the city.
Not everything happening this month “belongs” to Open City, of course. Plenty of galleries, artists and adjacent businesses are riding the September wave under their own steam, so it’s good to keep an ear to the ground for other shindigs.
We’ve picked just a handful of highlights. For the full Open City programme, trawl through the calendar and map at artjoburg.com/open-city. The sheer glut of what’s on is amazing (do not let us ever hear you say there’s nothing to do in Joburg!)
Start with the mothership
For the big guns, head to the actual fair at the Sandton Convention Centre. First off, there’s the HUB section, where the likes of Goodman, Stevenson, Everard Read, Gallery Momo and kumalo | turpin hold court. LAB is younger and less predictable, pulling in galleries and collectives from Botswana, Zambia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
New this year at the show is ARC, for work that sits a little less comfortably inside the usual art fair boxes. INK is the more wallet-friendly stop for prints, editions and artist books, while MAX goes in the opposite direction entirely: very big work, with BMW Art Generation taking over the section this year.
Best advice? Go once for the atmosphere and then return to do a serious interrogation of the art.
Occupy the Rand Club
What happens when artists take over one of Joburg’s grandest old institutions? We’re about to find out. Occupying the Gallery, the artist collective and mentorship platform co-founded by acclaimed artists and Joburg residents Mary Sibande and Lawrence Lemaoana, is moving into the historic Rand Club as part of Open City.
Far from a conventional exhibition, the club becomes a living, working studio where visitors can watch emerging artists at work, join talks and workshops and catch performances spilling into the surrounding city streets.
It forms part of Indigo Futures, a wider residency led by Sibande, Lemaoana and celebrated Malian artist and master indigo practitioner Aboubakar Fofana.
The residency officially opens on August 27. Follow @occupyingthegallery for programme details.
Inside Joburg’s creative heart
Contra.Joburg is one of our favourite Jozi art events of the year. Now in its fifth year, it’s real, gritty, heartfelt and choc-a-bloc with talent. With more than 170 artists spread across 16 creative spaces, it’s also a reminder of just how much is going on in this city.
It takes place on August 29 and 30, and this year’s theme is “Different is Good”. Saturday is the bigger and busier day, with performance, dance, music and art across the city; Sunday slows things down and takes visitors inside studios to meet the people actually making the work.
High on our Saturday list is the Joburg Ballet at the Rand Club (the joint is having a busy month), where the dancers once again turn the grand old building into an unexpected stage. The club is also hosting Thabo Pie’s RDP (Redevelopment & Deconstruction Programme) and contemporary African photography on the fourth floor. We’d also suggest you swing by the Creative Uprising Studio at Constitution Hill’s Transwerke building to make your own resistance poster.
Sunday is for nosing around. August House and Ellis House open their studios, while Victoria Yards hosts BodyWeaving, an interactive work involving people, movement and thread. One stop we’re particularly keen on is renowned artist Usha Seejarim’s wonderfully quirky working studio in Selby.
Contra gives you access to artists and places you might otherwise never encounter. There are established names and emerging ones, with plenty of opportunity to buy work too. Best of all, you don’t have to negotiate Joburg traffic between every stop. For Contra.Joburg, a hop-on, hop-off shuttle, included in the ticket price, runs every 20 minutes from 10am.
Details, routes and tickets: Contra.Joburg
At the Gallery
What “art month” is complete without a gallery opening or two to flit to and fro from? We’re most excited about Karel Nel’s Translucent Worlds, opening at Everard Read in the first week of September. The man is a national treasure — for his art, his mind, his curatorial eye, his humility and his kindness. We’ve had a small taste of the pastel and pigment works on bonded fibre fabric he’s about to debut and can tell you: they’re blockbusters.
We’ll also be checking out two shows at kumalo | turpin at Nine Yards. Pickpocketed Inheritance by Nathaniel Sheppard III takes the archive — inherited, complicated and never entirely innocent — and pulls it apart through collage, painting and printmaking, asking what happens when images change hands and their meanings shift.
Also opening there on September 3 is Wim Legrand’s Off Script, a lively jumble of scenes, still lifes and landscapes that plays with the vitality of imagination, image-making, and the business of turning images into commodities.
Bookmark this!
In 2020, one of our favourite writers and curators, Sean O’Toole, embarked on a long-term research project focusing on the South African photobook. Supported by A4 Arts Foundation, the project included two exhibitions in Cape Town and Japan, and culminated in the publication of the new book Photo book! Photo-book! Photobook!.
So what exactly is a photobook? And why do they matter in understanding South Africa’s rich photographic history? O’Toole will answer these and many other questions around this neglected area of art publishing at Strauss & Co’s Joburg office on Wednesday September 2 at 5.30 pm.
E-mail info@straussart.co.za to book a seat.
Goldblatt’s Joburg
At Wits Art Museum (WAM), an exhibition marking what would have been David Goldblatt’s 95th year places his work alongside that of nine mostly Joburg-based photographers, including Gulshan Khan, Jabulani Dhlamini, Jo Ractliffe, Jodi Bieber, Lindokuhle Sobekwa, Sabelo Mlangeni and Tshepiso Mazibuko.
Curated by Brenda Goldblatt (the late artist’s daughter) and Fiona Rankin-Smith, the show circles ideas of home, belonging and survival, offering very different ways of seeing Joburg — and the lives lived within it.
At WAM until October 24. Admission free
