MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
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David Koloane: Something out of nothing
Outstanding work from subtle chronicler of apartheid injustice
KOLOANE: Three Women, 2015
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JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production that panders – if inadvertently – to Western prejudice against China
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
ALEX HALL recommends a book that places empirical evidence at the heart of understanding racism
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.
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