Art weekend out: 10 highlights at FNB Art Joburg 2024

04 Sep 2024

Map your fair experience with our 10 picks of FNB Art Joburg 2024. Photo: Supplied.

From Penny Siopis' legacy in film to Johannes Phokela's monumental works, this year's fair promises an excellent line-up. Photo: Supplied.

Attend free guided walkabouts each day of the fair with art experts. Photo: FNB Art Joburg.

Now in its 17th year, FNB Art Joburg touches down at Sandton Convention Centre from Fri, Sep 6 – Sat, Sep 8, 2024. Buy your tickets for the art-filled weekend here.

As we count down the days to FNB Art Joburg this weekend, we bring you 10 art happenings we're particularly looking forward to as part of the fair's exciting line-up. Use these as points of interest as you map your fair experience or attend one of the free curated tours, happening twice daily at 11:30 and 13:30, with art experts Frederico Freschi, Phokeng Setai, and Ashraf Jamal. Find more highlights from the interactive AUX programme here, and keep reading for our picks of the fair.

For something different, join Thabo the Tourist's Red Bus tour on Sat, Sep 7 visiting galleries and artists' studios around Joburg, with FNB Art Joburg as the final stop. Book here.

Sounding Venice – dispatches from the Biennale

Visitors engage with *Quiet Ground*, a sound installation at the South African Pavilion in Venice. Photo: Bubblegum Club.

Couldn't make it to the 2024 Venice Biennale? Don't worry, nor could we. But we have found the next best thing... a travelling project from this year's South African Pavilion, Quiet Ground. Under this banner, multidisciplinary artists Molemo Moiloa and Nare Mokgotho of the MADEYOULOOK collective presented a sound installation entitled Dinokana. The piece explores "the secret life of land and water", examining the ways our natural environment is shaped by socio-political forces.

On the fair's opening day of Fri, Sep 6, head to the AUX Theatre from 14:30 to experience an excerpt of Dinokana followed by a discussion with artists Moiloa, Mokgotho, and South African Pavillion curator Portia Malatjie.

Penny Siopis in motion

A still from Penny Siopis' film *She Breathes Water*. Photo: Stevenson Gallery.

Many images spring to mind when we think about Penny Siopis, the multidisciplinary South African artist who came to prominence with her Cake paintings in the early 1980s, also known for her Pinky Pinky series starring a pink tokoloshe (half-human, half-animal figure) that speaks to the psychological and mythical fears of women in this country, particularly teenage girls. Lesser known but no less impressive, Siopis' astonishing body of short films places her at the forefront of contemporary artist-filmmakers. She uses found footage to create short video essays that function as densely encrypted accounts of historical time and memory, touching on elements of gender and power. The publication Your History with Me is a comprehensive study of these films, made between 1997 and 2021.

At the AUX Theatre on Fri, Sep 6 from 17:30, Siopis is joined in conversation with the book's editor Sarah Nuttall and contributing writer Sinazo Chiya.

Walking with Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi

"I was taught that my work should communicate; my work should meet the world" – **Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi**. Photo: UJ Art Gallery.

In 1991, before the dawn of South Africa's first democratic elections, Marapyane-born Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi travelled to Sweden. There, she was set to exhibit a series of works to facilitate communication between Sweden and her home country. But the pieces were lost without a trace, leading to more than three decades of grief and unanswered questions. It is remarkable that 32 years since their disappearance, 28 of Sebidi's artworks were found in the attic of Nyköping Folk High School in Sweden and have since returned home. These long-lost treasures were shown to the public for the first time in Ntlo E Etsamayang (The Walking House) at UJ Art Gallery. A few months later, in a solo booth presented by Everard Read, fair-goers have the chance to see these astonishing works firsthand.

From 12:30 on Sat, Sep 7 at the AUX Theatre, Sebidi will be joined in conversation by curator Gabriel Baard. A visionary and trailblazing South African artist well worth hearing from. Read more about Sebidi's lost and found works here.

Legends behind the lens

Alf Kumalo captured many dramatic moments in South Africa's history, both joyous and tragic. Photo: The Melrose Gallery.

For the 2024 edition of FNB Art Joburg, GIF is a new photography-focussed pavilion championing the medium as an art practice. This is in keeping with last year's FNB Art Prize winner, Lindokuhle Sobekwa – the first documentary photographer to take home the award since Cedric Nunn's inaugural win in 2011 (read our interview with Sobekwa about his poignant solo show Umkhondo: Going Deeper at JAG here).

Coinciding with a three-decade milestone since South Africa's first democratic elections, the fair presents the work of three photographic legends: Alf Khumalo, Ernest Cole, and Peter Magubane. In different ways, these practitioners used their cameras to document and expose the realities of our past, thus contributing to our new dispensation, and played an important role in narrating the beginnings of our nation's democracy. The GIF space also offers purpose-built sections where galleries spotlight photographers on their books.

SMAC attack

Marlene Steyn's quirky imagination is part of **SMAC Gallery's** showing at the fair. Photo: SMAC Gallery.

One of our favourite galleries beyond Joburg's borders, it's always a treat to see what SMAC Gallery brings to the fair. This year, as part of the gallery HUB section, SMAC's all-star cast of contemporary African artists includes the inimitable Mary Sibande – visual artist and storyteller – and the curious other-worlds of painter and sculptor Marlene Steyn. Plus, expect work from Simphiwe Buthelezi, Frances Goodman, Bonolo Kavula, Rosie Mudge, Simon Stone, and Michaela Younge.

From Harare, with love

Zimbabwe is represented by emerging painter Again Chokuwamba (pictured) and two FNB Art Prize winners. Photo: First Floor Gallery Harare.

Also in the gallery HUB pavilion, we'll be looking out for First Floor Gallery Harare – Zimbabwe’s leading contemporary art space. Since launching in 2009, this experimental, artist-run initiative has been an important springboard for Zimbabwean artists, furthering careers both locally and beyond. Emerging painters Again Chokuwamba and Grace Nyahangare show alongside 2021 FNB Art Prize winner Wycliffe Mundopa as well as the FNB Art Prize winner for 2024 Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude at the gallery's booth, which also spotlights sculptor Zacharaha Magasa.

Paint it purple – Javett-UP in Joburg

**Javett-UP** brings work from its astonishing art collection to FNB Art Joburg. Photo: Javett-UP.

Johannesburg's seminal art institutions are the focus of the fair's ORG section, including the excellent Javett-UP Art Centre. Based at the University of Pretoria, Javett-UP seeks to engage the public with the creativity and diversity of African art, from the ancient to contemporary. The museum's art collection includes an impressive and expansive selection of 20th-century South African art. Exploring the complex relationships between land, identity, and power in post-apartheid South Africa, works from the 2024/2025 exhibition We, the Purple travel to FNB Art Joburg this year (if after the fair you'd like to see more, catch the Gautrain to Hatfield and visit Javett-UP. Surrounding attractions make it a worthwhile day trip).

Johannes Phokela writ large

Famous for working on a large scale, Johannes Phokela presents a new series at the fair. Photo: Zeitz MOCAA.

Things get magnified for the MAX section, where larger-than-life, scale-defying works come out to play. Here, distinguished Soweto-born painter Johannes Phokela shines with his series The Seven Virtues. Celebrated for his unique integration of classical European techniques with contemporary themes, his oeuvre serves as a profound foundation to explore Chastity, Temperance, Charity, Diligence, Patience, Kindness, and Humility. The idiomatic expression "Do as I say and not as I do" is central to the artist's musings, highlighting the tension between professed ideals and actual behaviour. If you've seen Phokela's work in the flesh before, you'll know that his canvasses absorb you. Make this a place to pause at the fair.

Take me to CHURCH

For his residency with the project space, Piet Tohlang Khabo investigates labour as a cultural practice. Photo: CHURCH.

An incubation for emerging galleries and hybrid art spaces, gallery LAB brings interesting contributions from Namibia, Nigeria, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Zambia, Ethiopia, and Uganda to the fair. Included is CHURCH, an unconventional art space of diminutive proportions – direct from Cape Town's vibrant Church Street inner-city art hub. Due to its independent nature, this project space allows artists to take risks and test boundaries, making it a breath of fresh air in an often tightly controlled art world. This is likewise true of the artists they're showcasing at the fair: Nkhensani Mkhari, Piet Tohlang Khabo, Jody Brand, Alka Dass, and Warren Marroon.

Namibia art now

*Loss and Damage*, a rousing textile piece by eco-warrior artist Ina Maria Shikongo. Photo: The Project Room.

Also part of gallery LAB, The Project Room gives eyes into the Namibian art world – a neighbour who doesn't often get much airtime. It's quality over quantity in this exhibit, which brings work by climate justice activist and artist Ina Maria Shikongo and inventive painter Rudolf Seibeb to FNB Art Joburg.

Bonus: FNB Art Joburg and beyond

FNB ART PRIZE WINNER LINDOKUHLE SOBEKWA'S SOLO
Lindokuhle Sobekwa's "breakout" photo series Nyaope: Everything you give me my Boss, will do, was published in the Mail & Guardian in 2014 – cementing him as a deep seer and a formidable artist. Now a decade into his lens-based practice and off the back of his FNB Art Prize win in 2023, his solo exhibition Umkhondo: Going Deeper opens at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG). In this exhibition, two significant and interconnected bodies of work unite under the banner of introspection and discovery, as Sobekwa navigates profound personal loss and grapples with his sense of belonging. Read our interview with Sobekwa here.

OPEN CITY – THREE WEEKS OF ART AND CULTURE AROUND JOBURG
Before we know it, FNB Art Joburg will have come and gone, but fret not: Open City is FNB Art Joburg's initiative to spotlight independent and emerging cultural practitioners, with three weeks of free and paid programming that celebrates the city's art and culture until Thu, Sep 19. From the fair's managing director Mandla Sibeko: "Open City takes our ethos of economic stimulation, inclusivity and better access for all, out of the convention centre, into essential hubs across Johannesburg." Find out more here.