Based on the Atholl collection of South African art, this superbly produced volume explores themes of transformation and metamorphosis, resistance and affinity, highlighting the fragility of our relationships with ourselves, with one another, with nature, and with worlds beyond our grasp.
This fine illustrated catalogue of the 178 paintings, sculpture and works on paper currently in the collection also includes biographies of the 35 artists represented, while nine essays by Deon Viljoen voice the curatorial spirit, governing impulses and broad themes that animate the collection: borders and boundaries, perception and uncertainty, etc.
The collective tenor of the art in the Atholl Collection is provocative and questioning. It creates spaces where the brutal and disruptive often spar with the sensual and seductive. The collection spans roughly 120 years of artmaking at Africa’s southern tip and although rooted in the context of colonialism, apartheid, and post-colonialism it reaches beyond South Africa’s borders.

Privately published to a very high standard, with excellent photographs and notes. Cloth-bound hardback with a cover design based on a detail from William Kentridge’s monumental aquatint and etching Refugees (You will find no other seas), from his Rome mural Triumphs and Laments along a 500-meter stretch of the Tiber River, completed in 2016.