Featuring William Kentridge’s 9 films and the talks

This Fair will see the largest collection of African and South African contemporary art on show at the Sandton Convention Centre. Running alongside the Joburg Art Fair is the Joburg Art Week, which is an Artlogic initiative aimed at creating an annual arts event that highlights cultural happenings in Johannesburg.

There are a number of exciting events at satellite venues planned as part of Joburg Art Week including the screening of William Kentridge’s acclaimed 9 Films; the Marlene Dumas exhibition ‘Intimate Relations’, the opening of the Spier Contemporary exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery; a series of not-to-be-missed guided tours by international curator Simon Njami, artist Robin Rhode and freelance writer and curator Carol Brown, and The Talks, which aim to create a forum for lively discussions around African contemporary art by significant thinkers and practitioners in the field, will happen at the Alexander Theatre.

The screening of William Kentridge’s 9 Films – that includes an introduction by the artist – will be screened at the Linder Auditorium on Friday, March 14 at 7pm. 9 Films is a showcase of his film work as a single evening’s performance. The animated films are a selection of his work from the last 17 years and feature his characteristic charcoal capture and erase technique. This series maps South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy through the rise and fall of a fictional antihero, a wealthy Johannesburg mine owner Soho Eckstein. The films are projected from 35 mm film projectors for a total duration of 82 minutes. Music composed by Philip Miller and performed by the Sontonga Quartet, Jill Richards and jazz singer Tumelo Maloi accompany the stirring visuals.

9 Films was first presented at the opening of the Johannesburg Constitutional Court in January 2004. It then went on to be shown in Central and Prospect Park in New York in 2005 and at the Melbourne Festival in 2006. This SA screening is sponsored by Standard Bank. Tickets are available at Computicket from February 28 and at the Joburg Art Fair ticket counter and cost R150.

Intimate Relations is South African-born, Amsterdam-based painter Marlene Dumas’ first solo exhibition in Africa and the broadest exhibition of her work to date.Jointly curated by Dumas and Emma Bedford, the show was conceived as a homecoming aimed at giving South African audiences in-depth insights into Dumas’ extraordinary oeuvre through the broadest possible selection of her work. The show includes works ranging from early conceptual pieces from Dumas’ student years at the Michaelis School of Art, University of Cape Town, to later figurative paintings and drawings dealing with contemporary global issues. Also included are new paintings produced last year, expressly for the exhibition. The works are mainly drawn from a number of public and private collections in The Netherlands and Belgium. Dumas chose Intimate Relations as the exhibition’s title as a way of framing the curatorial vision to focus thinking around questions of what constitutes intimate relations between people, places and paintings. Intimate Relations is on show at the Standard Bank Gallery during the duration of the Joburg Art Week.

Other highlights include a guided tour of The Joburg Art Fair at the Sandton Convention Centre on Friday, March 14, at noon by Carol Brown followed by a guided tour by curator Simon Njami at 2pm. This will be followed at 4pm by a talk by South African artist Robin Rhode who was chosen by the New York PerryRubenstein Gallery to be featured as part of the special projects section of the Joburg Art Fair.

Setting up a conscious counterpoint to the Joburg Art Fair stalls at the Sandton Convention Centre in the city’s slick northern suburbs, The Floor Party will be hosted on the former Johannesburg Stock Exchange trading floor in the gritty heart of downtown Johannesburg on Saturday 15 March at 9pm. Decommissioned in 1997 when the JSE relocated to Sandton Central, the super-retro modern architecture of the former headquarters of capital will set the tone for 80’s trading flashbacks – with a range of creative acts and installation treatments designed by the Trinity Session and showcasing site-specific performance works by Jay Pather and Anthea Moys, artists screenings, audiovisual projections and a range of Joburg Art Fair party beats by guest DJs. Get in the mood to go big at the Joburg Art Fair’s hottest extracurricular moment. Tickets are available via Computicket from 28 February and at the Joburg Art Fair ticket stand.

The Talks is a series of lectures about collecting art and the trends and influences that drive the art market. These are aimed at a broad base of people including academics, first time buyers and international collectors and take place at the Alexander Theatre in Braamfontein on Saturday, March 15, from 2 until 6pm.

The Talks will be grouped into three main strands of discussion: My Collection (with a focus on collecting and curating), the Artist Spot and Creative Industries (focused on the relationship between commerce and art and how the city interfaces with art). The keynote speaker is Louise Blouin MacBain, chairperson of the LTB Group of Companies – a global media business with a commitment to arts and culture. Group publications include Art + Auction, Modern Painters, and the newly launched Culture + Travel. The group produces around 50 magazines and 130 titles in total each year. Also taking part are Christopher Spring, curator of the Sainsbury African galleries at the British Museum; Simon Njami, curator of the Joburg Art Fair’s ‘As You Like It’; Thumelo Mosaka, assistant curator at the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Robin Rhode, one of South Africa’s most successful recent art exports who is currently based in Berlin and Oliver Koerner von Gustorf, an art critic and freelance cultural journalist from Berlin. Tickets for The Talks are available at R200 each via Computicket from February 28 and at the Joburg Art Fair ticket counter.

There will be a free public talk at the Alexander Theatre on March 15 from 11am to noon with Blouin MacBain.

The opening of Spier Contemporary at the Johannesburg Art Gallery takes place on the evening of Saturday, March 15 at 7pm with a guided tour on Sunday March 16 at 11am.

Artlogic is the company behind the Joburg Art Week.

More details on www.joburgartfair.co.za