David Goldblatt HonFRPS was a South African photographer noted for his portrayal of South Africa during the period of apartheid. After apartheid had ended he concentrated more on the country's landscapes. What differentiates Goldblatt's body of work from those of other anti-apartheid artists is that he photographed issues that went beyond the violent events of apartheid and reflected the conditions that led up to them. His forms of protest have a subtlety that traditional documentary photographs may lack: "[M]y dispassion was an attitude in which I tried to avoid easy judgments. . . . This resulted in a photography that appeared to be disengaged and apolitical, but which was in fact the opposite." He has numerous publications to his name.
Brett Murray is a South African artist mostly known for his steel and mixed media wall sculptures. He was born in Pretoria, South Africa. Murray has a master's degree in fine art from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, 1989. Referred to by critic Brenda Atkinson as "the dark prince of South African pop (art)", Murray is one of the country's most popular artists, often using easily recognisable media images with the addition of a subversive and bitterly funny twist. Murray's work addresses the wars of the cultures, the clash between Afrocentrism and Eurocentrism, the old and the new South Africas. "With my work I hope to critically entertain. Through satirical and tragic reflections on South Africa, I hope to shift people's perspectives and change people's minds, indulgent, arrogant and pretentious as this might sound," he says. More recently, his work has explored his own personal experiences and identity. Murray was also the founder of the sculpture department at Stellenbosch University.
Hermann Niebuhr is a South African artist who lives in De Rust. He utilizes oils on canvas in a classical painterly style to document urban decay as well as rural landscapes.
Tracey Rose is a South African artist who lives and works in Johannesburg. Rose is best known for her performances, video installations, and photographs.
Richardt Strydom is an artist, creative and educator based in Johannesburg. He was Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design at the North-West University in Potchefstroom.
Ruth Sacks is a South African artist who lives and works in Johannesburg. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the South African Research Chair Initiative (SARChI) for Social Change at Fort Hare University. Sacks holds a PhD (Arts) from the University of the Witwatersrand where she was a fellow at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER). Her third artist book, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under Seas, was launched in 2013. She is a laureate of the HISK in Ghent. She was one of the facilitators of the artist-run project space the Parking Gallery, hosted by the Visual Arts Network of South Africa (VANSA) in Johannesburg. Ruth Sacks' work has been presented internationally in venues such as the African Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennalein 2007, the ZKM Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe in 2011 and the National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi in 2017.
Christo Coetzee was a South African assemblage and Neo-Baroque artist closely associated with the avant-garde art movements of Europe and Japan during the 1950s and 1960s. Under the influence of art theorist Michel Tapié, art dealer Rodolphe Stadler and art collector and photographer Anthony Denney, as well as the Gutai group of Japan, he developed his oeuvre alongside those of artists strongly influenced by Tapié's Un Art Autre (1952), such as Georges Mathieu, Alfred Wols, Jean Dubuffet, Jean Fautrier, Hans Hartung, Pierre Soulages, Antoni Tàpies and Lucio Fontana.
Angela de Jesus is a South African visual artist and curator living and working in Bloemfontein.
Sanell Aggenbach is a South African artist living and working in Woodstock, Cape Town. Using painting, printmaking, and sculpture, her work addresses the relationship between history and private narratives, with a sense of ambiguity. Her work also explores the processes of nostalgia and historical myth-making, often incorporating the playful, disarming, and absurd to draw the viewer into discussions of darker subjects. She has a unique style of combining traditional painting techniques with sculptural elements, as well as typically feminine crafts such as sewing and tapestry.
Marco Cianfanelli is a South African artist who has been involved in a wide range of projects involving art, architecture and public spaces. Cianfanelli combines computer-generated, data-driven applications with human, expressive, gestural acts to create tension in his work. Cianfanelli is one of a handful of South African artists whose work successfully spans the public and domestic sphere. He began his career painting landscapes and continues to be concerned with romanticized space and that which is marginalized through the very act of romanticizing. Cianfanelli's slick, pared-down, iconographic recent works are intricately linked with the complexity of loving South Africa.
Doreen Southwood is a South African artist, designer, and boutique owner based in Cape Town. She works in a wide variety of media in her artwork, producing sculptures, objects, prints, film, and more, which she often bases on personal experiences and self exploration. Her candidness regarding personal flaws and the cycles of repression and coping that accompany conservative, middle class, Afrikaans upbringing inform much of her work, calling attention to ways in which women are silenced or otherwise repressed in that space.
Pamela Stretton is a South African artist whose work deals predominantly with the female body and its commodification, beautification, and role in popular culture. Most of her works are digital ink jet prints that combine photographic images and text; they are composites of barcodes, labels, and advertisements that create a larger image of the female form. The pieces are largely autobiographical, but also carry general themes about popular culture, fashion, health, and food. The painstaking and meticulous creation of each piece references obsessive eating disorders. Similarly, the grid mechanism portrays the pressures of conformity. Her style has been called a female version of Chuck Close.
Gordon Froud is a South African artist and curator. Froud's work has been showcased in hundreds of exhibitions throughout South Africa and the world, and he has served as a judge for several national art competitions. He has been the recipient of numerous awards including a Merit Award for Sculpture in the 1988 New Signatures Competition and an ABSA Gold Medal for contribution to the arts in 2005. Froud has also spent many years working as an art educator at both the secondary and tertiary level in London and South Africa. Perhaps known best for his use of found and untraditional materials in his sculptures, Froud attempts to explore the human condition in his work, particularly with regard to DNA, babies, genetics, bacteria, viruses and self-portraits. He currently balances his art practice and curation with running his own Gordart Gallery, which focuses on developing previously little-known artists.
James Webb is a South African artist best known for his interventions and installations incorporating sound. Webb also works as a sound designer, curator and teacher. His sound installations place special emphasis on the sourcing and presentation of the sound clips, as well as the social significance and context of these sounds. Often referred to as a "collector of sounds," Webb is interested in the role that aural events play in our everyday life. The physical presentation of the work, including the installation space and the logistics of speakers, are also deliberate choices for Webb.
Nel Erasmus is a South African artist.
Lionel Smit is a South African artist, known for his contemporary portraiture executed through large canvases and sculptures.
Deborah Bell is a South African painter and sculptor whose works are known internationally.
Jeannette Unite is a South African artist who has collected oxides, metal salts and residues from mines, heritage and industrial sites to develop paint, pastel and glass recipes for her large scale artworks that reflect on the mining and industrial sites where humanity's contemporary world is manufactured.
Senzeni Marasela is a South African visual artist born in Thokoza who works across different media, combining performance, photography, video, prints, textiles, and embroidery in mixed-medium installations. She obtained a BA in Fine Arts at the Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in 1998. Her work is exhibited in South Africa, Europe, and the United States, and is part of local and international collections, including Museum of Modern Art or the Newark Museum and is referenced in numerous academic papers, theses journal, and book publications.
Stefan Smit, is a contemporary South African fine artist.
