APURBA CHATTERJEE explains how British artists in India used the “picturesque” to reshape colonial landscapes and celebrate imperial power
DAVID KOLOANE, who died last year at the age of 81, produced work that shines with a rare glow of truth which will stand the test of time. Some of it can be seen in the exhibition of his work currently online at the Goodman Gallery in London.
Koloane grew up in the Johannesburg township of Soweto and although he’d been drawing since his schooldays, he recalled: “I was a late starter. I never knew that black people could become artists ... I was amazed to discover that black people were allowed in art galleries.”
Apartheid is at the root of his work, with his subject urban life as experienced by black Africans and modernism frees him to express oppression and resistance with a rare passion and subtlety which avoids simplistic didacticism.
SIMON DUFF is thrilled by a visceral, no-holds-barred exploration of the expressive powers of raw material
MIRANDA RICHMOND relishes the gloriously liberated art of Roy Oxlade, and traces his method back to the thinking of David Bomberg, his acknowledged teacher
SIMON PARSONS applauds an artist who rescues and rehumanises stories of women, the victims of violence, from a feminist perspective
KEVIN DONNELLY accepts the invitation to think speculatively in contemplation of representations of people of African descent in our cultural heritage



