Context (CMS Context)
Presented by The Art Fund and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. An acquisition project to build a collection of modern and contemporary work on paper from Australia, Canada and South Africa was undertaken over 2011-13 with the support of a grant under The Art Fund's RENEW programme. The collection was developed with the expert advice and generous assistance of Annie Coombes and Norman Vorano in relation to South African and Inuit artists respectively. Khadija Carroll, Anita Herle and Diana Wood Conroy also contributed to the selection process. Obtained as part of a larger group of prints (2013.266- 283) from The Artists' Press (The Artists' Press, Waterboard Farm, White River, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa).

Sam Nhlengethwa (b. 1955) is one of South Africa's most important living artists. He studied at Rorke's Drift and sustains the legacy of that foundationally-important art centre, that exemplified the vital work of printmaking in empowering and representing black South African experience and history. He went on to win a major prize, Standard Bank's Young Artist of the Year, in 1994, the year of South Africa's first democratic elections. Since then he has exhibited extensively, nationally and internationally. His work has embraced a range of techniques, styles and subjects. It is enormously valuable for a UK collection, in that the range of his prints effectively communicate key dimensions of South African life, ranging from mine-work and township life through defining events of the history of the struggle to the inspiration of jazz.

MAA’s selection represents his practice over a period of almost twenty years, and a unique vision that is at once political and historical, and rich in personal insight. The 2012 works were described as 'conversation pieces'; they engagingly evoke aspects of township sociality through typical characters and fragments of conversation; the viewer cannot resist speculating about what came before and what follows. These simple, beautifully composed works reinvigorate the genre of township imagery, reclaiming vitally important subjects and dimensions of black experience that have otherwise been cheapened by the emergence of, for example, generic paintings for tourists of township scenes.


Event Date 7/3/2014
Author: maa

Description (CMS Description)
Seven colour lithograph by Sam Nhlengethwa, inscribed, signed and dated by the artist. Titled 'Please lead our shift', 2012. Edition 9/35. With 'TAP.11-47' written on the rear in pencil. Condition: Excellent
Event Date 7/3/2014
Author: maa