New Futures on Auction
The record breaking numbers of Strauss & Co’s sale that took place last week in Cape Town tell a tale of a buoyant market place where established precedents are continually met by receptive buyers and fueled by savvy sellers. As a way of framing some of these highlights I want to make some art historical observations in order to illustrate the character of growth that the secondary market place is currently enjoying.
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Creepy Crawly
Rosa Lyster
Today adjective presents the first installation of Picture & Prose, a new section dedicated to experimental writing that takes it cue from an image of the authors choosing.
Here’s Rosa Lyster: “I couldn’t work or write or do anything normal at all. I was fully, fully convinced that I had fucked up my entire life. I knew this was not rational, but I could not help it. ‘Why didn’t you try and get a job?’ you say. No. If I tried to get a job, I would fail, and then everyone would know that I was doomed”.
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Editorial
Matthew Partridge
Instead, adjective will let you make up your own mind by way of a new section; Picture & Prose. If you haven’t got Issue 1 yet, then this is probably your first time hearing of the idea. It’s quite simple really; taking off the blinkers of orthodoxy by ignoring ‘art’ for a second, it presents a section of writing devoted to the space between words and images. First up is Rosa Lyster, taking angry swims and feeling 25. And in another first, because hey, life is full of firsts, adjective would like to introduce our readers to the cartoons of Georgina Gratrix. They also feature in Issue 1, so sorry internet you won’t be able to see those ones here.
Continue ReadingRoger Ballen: THE THEATRE OF APPARITIONS
While Ballen’s attention to the composition of the photos is typically exact and while the departure into abstraction has created unique images that will become quickly part of his distinctive oeuvre, it’s difficult to appreciate them in the same way as his previous work.
Continue ReadingIf You Go Out Into The Woods Tonight
This evening adjective will be hitting First Thursdays in Cape Town with our first printed edition, Issue 1. If you’re interested in getting your own copy, come to SMITH tonight where you can check out some of the surprises in store. (Hint: the magazine contains a limited edition artists print by Robin Rhode whose exhibition Paths and Fields in currently on show at the Stevenson in Cape Town).
Continue ReadingMichaelis in the age of FMF: Inside Operatives
2016 presented a long overdue dialogue at UCT’s Hiddingh campus. Almost half of the academic year saw its occupation by the intervention collective Umhlangano, a mixture of artists, actors and theatre-makers whose frustration with institutional culture pushed for an urgent necessity in re-politicising an art institution that has slotted itself so neatly into the kak rainbow nation politik of post-1994 South Africa.
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adjective.online has been quiet for a little over a month. We’re sorry. But while ‘away’, dormant, silent, whatever way one might choose to describe internet silence, adjective explored the translation that occurs in the shift from online to paper. A compendium of sorts, the magazine features a highlights package with a few surprises. But before we get there (watch this space), here is a love letter to the vast world of dematerialised information affectionately known as the Internet.
Continue ReadingJohn Berger – A Life on the Page
Criticism, be it fusty essaying of this sort, or the jazzy punditry of Facebook, is an accessory practice. It is saying, not doing. What distinguished Berger was his attempt to weld the two possibilities – saying and doing – together.
Continue ReadingBloed Trek
Contemplative, each bowed in their own peculiar world, their mind’s eye drinking in a green escarpment bedecked by a mountain cocked like a jauntily crumpled hat. The scene is benign. Not all of this is man-made, nature is not always unforgiving, and Burchell should have plucked that mote from his jaundiced eye.
Continue ReadingBig Ideas & Vague Sentiments
There are certain traces, scars even, left behind when a work uproots itself from the contexts of one space and installs itself in another. While the historical figure of the explorer might still hold some credence in the artist’s native Italy, in South Africa we’ve grown a little more wary of the idea over the last 529 years.
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