Ink Rats
Current Events
Group Exhibition
The True Size of Africa
November 9, 2024 – August 17, 2025
Völklinger Hütte, Völklingen
Group Exhibition
Tuning In – Acoustique de l’émotion
October 3, 2024 – August 25, 2025
Foundation of the International Red
Cross and Red Crescent Museum,
Geneva
Forthcoming Events
Performance
Wozzeck
April 25 – May 16, 2025
Canadian Opera Company
Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, Toronto
A sporadic record of what happens in the studio, in video, words and images
OPENING TONIGHT IN BERKELEY
“The Great Yes, The Great No”
Zellerbach Hall
Berkeley
March 14 to 16, 2025
A chamber opera by William Kentridge, commissioned by LUMA Foundation, in partnership with the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence
Creative team
Concept | Director: William Kentridge
Associate Directors: Nhlanhla Mahlangu | Phala O. Phala
Choral Composer: Nhlanhla Mahlangu
Music Director: Tlale Makhene
Dramaturg: Mwenya Kabwe
Costume Design: Greta Goiris
Set Design: Sabine Theunissen
Lighting Design: Urs Schönebaum | Elena Gui
Projection Editing | Compositing: Žana Marović | Janus Fouché | Joshua Trappler
Cinematography: Duško Marović
Video Control: Kim Gunning
Performed and created by
Performers: Xolisile Bongwana, Hamilton Dhlamini, William Harding, Tony Miyambo, Nancy Nkusi, Neil McCarthy
Dancers: Thulani Chauke & Teresa Phuti Mojela
Chorus: Anathi Conjwa, Asanda Hanabe, Zandile Hlatshwayo, Khokho Madlala, Nokuthula Magubane, Mapule Moloi,Nomathamsanqa Ngoma
Musicians: Marika Hughes (Cello), Nathan Koci (Accordion | Banjo), Tlale Makhene (Percussion), Thandi Ntuli (Piano)
Produced by
THE OFFICE performing arts + film
A project of the Centre for the Less Good Idea
Lead commissioner
LUMA Foundation, Arles, France
Co-Commissioners
Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Miami USA; CAL Performances, Berkeley USA; Centre d’Art Battat, Montreal Canada; The Wallis Center for the Performing Arts, Beverly Hills USA
Foundational commissioning support for the development and creation of “The Great Yes, The Great No” provided by Brown Arts Institute, Brown University
Toured in partnership Quaternaire
Support for this performance is provided by The Great Yes, The Great No Council for Kentridge.
Lead Sponsors: The Jonathan Logan Family Foundation; Nadine Tang
Major Sponsors: Bob Ellis (March 15); Janice and Nicholas E. Brathwaite (March 15)
Sponsors: The Edgar Foster Daniels Foundation; Divesh & Diksha Makan
Additional support is provided by Helen Berggruen for Five Arts Foundation, John Berggruen, and Diana Nelson and John Atwater
Commissioning support is provided by William and Sakurako Fisher
Video: Workshop for “The Great Yes, The Great No”, Johannesburg 2024
William Kentridge
Carlton Centre Games Arcade
A new publication by Steidl
BOOK LAUNCH
Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg
Saturday 8 March, 2025
11am
There will be an informal conversation between William Kentridge, Gerhard Steidl and Lunetta Bartz.
The completion of William Kentridge’s Domestic Scenes (2021) and Catalogue Raisonné Volume 1. Prints and Posters 1974–1990 (2022), both published by Steidl, was an opportunity for Warren Siebrits to pause and take another more intimate look at a series of prints, singular and influential in Kentridge’s œuvre, titled “Carlton Centre Games Arcade” (1977).
The Carlton Centre in Johannesburg, owned by the mining company Anglo American, was the most expensive and prestigious hotel and shopping complex on the African continent at the time, and was just a short walk from Kentridge’s father’s legal practice. It is then no surprise that this complex was where he decided to begin the process of observational drawing which would lead to Kentridge’s first prolonged engagement with intaglio printing.
Not only is this book an opportunity for all Kentridge enthusiasts to catch a glimpse of this never before exhibited and little-known early series of 14 etchings, but it also gives the reader a further taste of the ongoing catalogue raisonné project.
Author: Warren Siebrits
Publisher: Steidl
Design: Lunetta Bartz
Images:
1. Carlton Centre Games Arcade—A Game of Skill, 1977
Etching, aquatint and drypoint, Image: 20 x 24.8 cm
2. Carlton Centre Games Arcade—Cigarettes,1977
Etching and colour aquatint, Image: 19.2 x 24.5 cm
3. Carlton Centre Games Arcade—Five Onlookers, 1977
Etching, aquatint and drypoint, Image: 11.5 x 14.5 cm
FAUSTUS IN AFRICA!
Baxter Theatre
Cape Town
26 February - 22 March, 2025
A collaboration between William Kentridge and Handspring Puppet Company and a re-working of the 1995 production of the same name.
Director
William Kentridge
Associate Director
Lara Foot
Puppetry Directors
Adrian Kohler & Basil Jones (Handspring Puppet Company)
Associate Puppetry Director
Enrico Dau Yang Wey
Design
Adrian Kohler & William Kentridge
Animation
William Kentridge
Puppet Construction
Adrian Kohler & Tau Qwelane
Puppet Costumes
Hazel Maree, Hiltrud von Seidlitz & Phyllis Midlane
Special Effects
Simon Dunckley
Set Design
Adrian Kohler
Set Construction
Dean Pitman
Set Painting & Dressing
Nadine Minnaar for Scene Visual Productions
Translation
Robert David MacDonald
Additional text
Lesego Rampolokeng
Music
James Phillips & Warrick Sony
Lighting Design & Production Management
Wesley France
Cast
Atandwa Kani, Jennifer Steyn, Wessel Pretorius
Puppeteers
Asanda Rilityana, Buhle Thembisile, Eben Genis, Mongi Mthombeni
Co-Producers
The 2025 version is produced by Quaternaire/Paris and restaged with co-production support of The Baxter Theatre Centre at the University of Cape Town (Cape Town), Centre d’art Battat (Montreal), Kunstfest (Weimar), Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), Théâtre de la Ville/Festival d’Automne (Paris).
The 1995 version was produced Handspring Puppet Company in association with The Market Theatre, Art Bureau (Munich), Kunstfest (Weimar), Standard Bank National Arts Festival, The Foundation for the Creative Arts, Sharp Electronics and Mannie Manim Productions.
Photo: Fiona MacPherson
Remove not the old landmark
Fugitive Words, 2024
Single channel HD video
8 min 33 sec
Animation
William Kentridge
Editing
Žana Marović
Music
Beethoven: Piano Trio No. 7 in B-Flat Major, Op. 97
“Archduke”: III. Andante cantabile
Jacqueline du Pré, Pinchas Zukerman, Daniel Barenboim
Video: Excerpt from “Fugitive Words” currently showing as part of the exhibition:
William Kentridge “History on One Leg”
December 21, 2024 – April 17, 2025
A4 Arts Foundation, Cape Town
A browsable selection of Kentridge’s notebooks made over the past fifteen years, shown alongside a new flipbook film, tools, materials and ephemera which focus on the process of making work in the studio.
Curated by
Josh Ginsburg
William Kentridge
OPENING TONIGHT IN LOS ANGELES
“The Great Yes, The Great No”
The Wallis Center
for Performing Arts
Beverley Hills
February 5 to 8, 2025
A chamber opera by William Kentridge, commissioned by LUMA Foundation, in partnership with the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence
Creative team
Concept | Director: William Kentridge
Associate Directors: Nhlanhla Mahlangu | Phala O. Phala
Choral Composer: Nhlanhla Mahlangu
Music Director: Tlale Makhene
Dramaturg: Mwenya Kabwe
Costume Design: Greta Goiris
Set Design: Sabine Theunissen
Lighting Design: Urs Schönebaum | Elena Gui
Projection Editing | Compositing: Žana Marović | Janus Fouché | Joshua Trappler
Cinematography: Duško Marović SASC
Video Control: Kim Gunning
Performed and created by
Performers: Xolisile Bongwana, Hamilton Dhlamini, William Harding, Tony Miyambo, Nancy Nkusi, Neil McCarthy
Dancers: Thulani Chauke & Teresa Phuti Mojela
Chorus: Anathi Conjwa, Asanda Hanabe, Zandile Hlatshwayo, Khokho Madlala, Nokuthula Magubane, Mapule Moloi,Nomathamsanqa Ngoma
Musicians: Marika Hughes (Cello), Nathan Koci (Accordion | Banjo), Tlale Makhene (Percussion), Thandi Ntuli (Piano)
Produced by
THE OFFICE performing arts + film
A project of the Centre for the Less Good Idea
Lead commissioner
LUMA Foundation, Arles, France
Co-Commissioners
Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Miami USA; CAL Performances, Berkeley USA; Centre d’Art Battat, Montreal Canada; The Wallis Center for the Performing Arts, Beverly Hills USA
Foundational commissioning support for the development and creation of “The Great Yes, The Great No” is provided by Brown Arts Institute at Brown University.
Toured in partnership Quaternaire
This production is made possible by generous support from:
Brenda R. Potter
Sakurako and William Fisher Family
Roy Cockrum Foundation
Joan Selwyn and Marc Selwyn, Geof and Laura Wyatt in Memory of Paul Selwyn
South Coast Plaza
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
Video: Performance at LUMA Arles, July 2024
Idiosyncratic lines of enquiry into particular aspects of studio practice or bodies of work
William Kentridge: Creative Machines
William Kentridge puts to use a diversity of ‘creative machines’ in making work. He methodologically rethinks drawing, as an unfinished process, a means of collecting and generating iconography, with the aim of maximizing narrative amplitude that goes beyond the limits of graphic representation by resorting to sound and cinematography.
Stumbling to Utopia
“Why continue with these gestures, with these drawings, these words, in the face of their imminent failure? Because without some idea of utopia, of a rescued world implicit not just in these gestures but in the act of making a drawing, a performance, a speech – without this we feel a gap, a hollow.” WK, 2016
Listening to the Trees
An anecdotal account of the making of the book “Waiting for the Sibyl” and a consideration of Kentridge’s ongoing series of tree drawings, by book designer Oliver Barstow
9 WORDS and one more
Making art is a uniquely human endeavour and an artist, the maker of art, is someone who distills what they feel and think about the world and expresses this visually. This requires one to read, to see, to listen, to feel, to question and be curious; to know, and yet to doubt; to have humility and to be brave.
All so different from what you expected
Things which are obvious in studio practice, like uncertainty, doubt, provisionality, are not about the COVID pandemic. They are themes I have worked on for many years – but these themes in the outside world have become much more present in these months.
Cursive
Cursive is the third set in a series of small bronze glyphs, following “Lexicon” (2017) and “Paragraph II” (2018). The glyphs started as a collection of ink drawings and paper cut-outs, each on a single page from a dictionary.
