The Mother City’s premier art event promises to leave viewers unbound
After a game of ministerial musical chairs that saw Nathi Mthethwa replace Paul Mashatile, Sean O’Toole wonders if Mthethwa is suited for the arts.
From mine dumps to city skylines, four new books bring South Africa’s diversity into focus, writes Sean O’Toole.
Paris is hosting ‘My Joburg’, a large group exhibition devoted to art from and about the place of gold
Next week, prominent South African photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa will appear in court to defend himself against allegations of murder.
Sean O’Toole traces the genre from its current incarnation back to the golden age of the genre amid high apartheid and African independence.
Cape Town has South Africa’s toughest rules to deal with animal behaviour, including noise limits and pooh. But do they work?
Climbing Mount Fuji is best done in July and August, when you may see more than just blackness and clouds, writes Sean O’Toole.
This year’s edition of the Documenta exhibition is a bit like a ‘magic encyclopaedia’,a space that covers the full spectrum of human expression.
Many in the publishing industry are wondering: Was Penguin’s Alison Lowry pushed — or did she jump?
On the corner of Kuyper Street and Service Road, finds the point where Zimbabwe meets Cape Town.
Sean O’Toole explores some of the portrayals of the naked black body that have elicited fierce reactions in SA’s recent past.
Photographers Stan Engelbrecht and Nic Grobler have been cycling across SA, photographing and interviewing bicycle-riding South Africans.
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/ 3 February 2012
Artist Candice Breitz is using the popular soapie <i>Generations</i> to further the racial debate in South Africa.
The sprawling physical bulk of the current airport is a short story written in numbers.
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/ 7 November 2011
Prince Charles recently visited South Africa on a whistle-stop tour to discuss trade and investment, unemployment, and visit local royalty.
What happens when an art critic becomes an investigator of organised crime and corruption?
When a bust of Hendrik Verwoerd disappeared into the night in Midvaal, the question arose: What actually happens to the statues from our sordid past?
Famous artist William Kentridge’s brief stint as a cartoonist for the <i>Weekly Mail</i> was marked by trepidation.
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/ 22 December 2010
Being stuck in traffic is a state of being in SA cities. And if estimates are right, it’s only going to get worse, says <b>Sean O’Toole</b>.
Photographer Marc Shoul’s black-and-white <i>Flatlands</i> finds moments of poignant silence in the hustle and bustle of the Johannesburg CBD.
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/ 12 December 2005
Nowadays, South Africa’s media training institutions all agree that students should be trained to think critically about the broad forces shaping a post-apartheid society. Sean O’Toole compares the curriculums and asks whether tuition is succeeding.
Is private television’s role as an instrument of nation building in Africa being challenged by the profit motive of multinational broadcasters? Sean O’Toole investigates the arguments, with a focus on MultiChoice Africa. The local conglomerate also has a chance to respond.
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/ 23 November 2004
The "quality" debate in local television production is essentially a standoff between economic pragmatists and nation-building ideologues. Sean O’Toole unpacks the quota quagmire, and gets views from top dogs like Franz Marx and Greg Marinovich.
Where once even the pictures were politically problematic, Afrikaans magazines are unburdening themselves of their historical legacy. Sean O’Toole writes that this sector reflects how the ideological purity of the language is splintering.
"A self-described "peripheral shit-stirrer", Boshoff cannot but be aware of the neurosis invoked by his defining physical feature. But then Boshoff, arguably the country’s foremost conceptual artist, has always pursued his own anonymity as ruthlessly as he has courted controversy." Sean O’Toole on how conceptual artist and eccentric Willem Boshoff’s new exhibition unearths the risky politics of the written word.
Looking recently at a photograph by David Goldblatt of Mugabe, I was struck by the dignified presence of the seated leader, writes Sean O’Toole. In an exhibition titled <i>Staged Realities</i>, curators Kathy Grundlingh and Michael Stevenson elegantly juxtapose competing ways of seeing and representing African identity in photography.
‘It is not very nice being white in South Africa if you’re young, even though I’m not a racist and had nothing to do with apartheid ever," reads an anonymous comment posted on the www.southafrica.com website. It is by no means a lone assertion. Ten years into democracy, Sean O’Toole wonders if white South Africans are ready to transform their collective identity.
This month <i>The Media</i> goes out on a thin limb to suggest the ten most influential media bosses on the African continent. The list is compiled by Sean O’Toole and Kevin Bloom, in consultation with Professor Tawana Kupe, and is based on criteria including economic muscle, political authority and cultural clout.
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/ 30 January 2004
There is something perversely appealing about the photograph, the complexity we graft on to that ostensibly simple thing. Since its birth in the 19th century, the photograph has fascinated and perplexed us in equal measures. So much so we now call it art. Which presented a bit of problem to the organisers of the 2004 DaimlerChrysler Art Award, writes Sean O’Toole.
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/ 14 November 2003
Given that books have a certain furtive longevity, one is inclined to ask what these books will say to future generations? Local publishers need to strive for a synthesis between content and form, writes Sean O’Toole.
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/ 17 October 2003
The vagaries of change have been profitable for a youthful breed of entrepreneurial art dealers, tastemakers whose influence has shaped who and what is being collected in the post-apartheid era. A new breed of savvy tastemakers are making their mark on the art scene, writes Sean O’Toole.