Gavin Jantjes and Sarat Maharaj in conversation

  • IMG_6134

    Gavin Jantjes, Untitled from The Kirstenbosch Series, 2023, Acrylic on canvas, 145 × 200 cm. Image courtesy the artist.  

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This event was on Thursday 13 June, 6.30pm

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Gavin Jantjes and Sarat Maharaj in conversation

Join artist Gavin Jantjes in conversation with art historian and curator Sarat Maharaj, as they uncover the ideas and themes explored in Jantjes exhibition To Be Free! A Retrospective 1970–2023. The exhibition traces his career from his formative years in Cape Town during the early years of South African apartheid to his recent transition to non-figurative painting. 

About Gavin Jantjes

Activist, painter, printmaker, curator and writer Gavin Jantjes (b. 1948, South Africa, lives and works in the UK) was born in Cape Town just as the apartheid regime in South Africa was beginning its ascent. Drawing on personal experience, he explores the role of art in furthering human rights, freedom of expression and cultural understanding. He has exhibited internationally, and his works can be found in the collections of the South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Tate, London; and Museum of Modern Art, New York. He has received commissions from the United Nations Refugee Council and the UN Commission on Apartheid. He has lectured at Chelsea College of Arts in London and served as artistic director for the Henie Onstad Art Center, Norway (1998–2004), and senior curator for the National Museum, Oslo (2004–2014). His many books include A Fruitful Incoherence (Iniva, 1998) and the four-volume Visual Century: South African Art in Context 1907–2007 (Wits University Press, 2010). He lives and works in Oxfordshire. 

About Sarat Maharaj

Sarat Maharaj is Professor of Visual Art and Knowledge Systems, Lund University/Malmo Art Academy, Sweden as well as Research Professor, Goldsmiths University of London where he was Professor of Art History/Theory (1980–2005). He was the Rudolf Arnheim Professor at the Philosophy Faculty of the Humboldt University, Berlin (2001–2002) and Stedelijk Fellow 2018 at the University of Amsterdam. 

His curatorial projects include Gothenburg Biennale: Pandemonium: art in a time of creativity fever (2011); There Is Always a Cup of Sea to Sail, 29th São Paulo Biennale (2010); Farewell to Postcolonialism, Towards a Post-Western Modernity, Guangzhou Triennial (2008); Knowledge Lab, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2005); documenta 11, Kassel (2002); and retinal.optical. visual.conceptual…, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2002) with Richard Hamilton and Ecke Bonk.