For his first exhibition in Johannesburg since 2020, Matloga presents a tableau of figures in quiet moments witnessed in moments of daily life between Johannesburg and Mamaila, the village where he grew up. The artist describes his paintings as ‘psychological landscapes’ where the range of emotions comprising the everyday are captured on a spectrum, ranging from love to exasperation and reverence. Where Matloga’s first exhibition, Back of the Moon, referenced scenes from local soap operas, plays and family albums, Tomorrow is Another Day relinquishes theatricality, emphasising stillness and familiarity alongside the equal measures of presence and dignity these evince. Working across painting, collage and monotype printmaking, Matloga is drawn to the varied gestural markings these materials produce. He sees the ink, charcoal and fast-drying paints as implements which demand presence and urgency, adding a temporal stake to his practice.
Carriers with Maxwell Alexandre, Pélagie Gbaguidi, and Ibrahim Mahama
30 August – 11 October
Goodman Gallery Johannesburg
This exhibition marks the first time Alexandre and Mahama have exhibited at the gallery. These three artists’ practices bear witness to histories that have been inscribed on bodies, materials, and territories. Across painting, installation, photography, and assemblage, each artist engages the act of “carrying”; as a burden, a legacy, a gesture of continuity, and a strategy of resistance. Opening during FNB Art Joburg, a pivotal moment in Johannesburg’s cultural calendar. Together, these artists engage the concept of carrying: transporting the past into the present, bearing witness to and transforming what has been inherited into something emancipatory. ‘Carriers’ are an active conduit; where stories move, where burdens shift, and where new forms of solidarity are made possible.
Glitter is dust that has learned to flirt with light. It is a constellation broken into fragments, each speck slipping through your fingers yet bright enough to catch the eye from across a room. It is neither solid nor liquid but a shimmer scattered, particles that shift their gleam depending on how you move or how the world moves around you. To wear it is to glow deliberately. To witness it is to be caught, momentarily, in the spell of sparkle. It is with this same shimmer that Zandile Tshabalala approaches her practice, tethering herself to the body and rendering it radiant, insistent, and impossible to look away from. Her own body, drawn through portraiture, collage, and figuration, has become a site of introspection and resistance. Across her career, she has painted herself not only into visibility but into sovereignty: the figure unapologetically present, languid, searching, and refusing erasure. For Tshabalala, self-portraiture has never been only about likeness. It has been about insistence. To depict herself repeatedly has been to wrest the Black woman’s image from the histories that sought to consume it and to return it to the realm of desire, complexity, and self-possession.
“A lot has been happening” is a body of work that is inspired by vulnerability around the black body. Looking at the softness that surrounds the figure but there is so much stereotype around the body. With the recent passing of my grandma the landscape that accompanies the portrait work are a translation of spiritual rituals and land politics from my home village. The lace element has been an element brought in as an element of softness and nostalgia but also grown to learn that its a fabric that is placed on ones coffin as a sign to pure transition.
Structures with Igshaan Adams, Kader Attia, Kamyar Bineshtarigh, Jellel Gasteli, David Goldblatt, Kiluanji Kia Henda, MADEYOULOOK, Matri-Archi(tecture), Hélio Oiticica, Hajra Waheed
31 May – 15 November
Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation (JCAF)
Structures is the second exhibition under the Worldmaking theme, following Ecospheres. A structure can be understood as either material or immaterial. It might represent a body of knowledge, a social framework or an infrastructural system treated as a single entity and held together by a plan, a pattern or a guiding logic. The Structures exhibition considers the human in relation to the built environment, and brings together artists and architects from the South who explore how space, place, and race intersect in both tangible and intangible structures. Structures reflects on how materials carry meaning and how people themselves can act as forms of infrastructure.
Sugar Coats, FNB Art Prize winner exhibition with Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude
Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG)
The opportunity to present Sugar Coats at the Johannesburg Art Gallery carries particular weight. As the institution housing the largest public collection of art on the African continent, JAG situates his work within a lineage of historic and contemporary voices. It affirms the significance of his practice not only within Zimbabwean and regional contexts but also within the broader canon of African and global art history. Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude’s practice has long grappled with the complexities of power, identity and survival in urban Zimbabwe. Through his evolving visual vocabulary, everyday objects—chairs, feet, laughing mouths, sneakers—become metaphors for authority, resistance, aspiration and disillusionment. Sugar Coats continues this exploration, confronting disempowerment and the residue of colonial systems that still define much of daily life. Sparkling canvases mimic the allure of consumer culture, yet beneath the surface they reveal fragile economies, precarious choices and the weight of compromise.