Artist

Sandile Radebe is a Johannesburg-based artist whose main area of interest is art practice in both public and private spaces. Sandile explores these spaces through stimulating a new reading of graffiti and, more broadly, the way language works to help construct our realities. Sandile studied BAFA (Honours) at Wits School of the Arts (2002-2006). He furthered his studies at the same institution in 2009 with a Postgraduate Diploma in Arts and Cultural Management. As a student, Sandile also participated in several workshops including ‘a very temporary monument for an unsung hero’ with Jean-Bernard Koeman and the ‘24 hour workshops’ with Christian Nerf in 2005. Sandile also started painting murals as part of a collective with Katlego Lefine and BJ Engelbrecht (2003). This was a means of generating income to acquire art supplies for the collective. The latter painted various murals including: the ‘Wits School of the Arts launch’ (2003); ‘Soil’, a play by Kgafela oa Mogogodi (2004); & Trinity Records studios (2005). Following graduation, Sandile continued in his individual capacity to paint murals as a way of making a living. He has executed many more solo works including murals for King Kong (2011) and several for the City of Johannesburg (2011). As a painting facilitator, he also helped realise murals together with learners with the Urban Arts Platform (2012) and Keleketla! Library (2011).

Sandile has participated in various group exhibitions including the ‘Assemblage Pop-Up show 2.0’ curated by Mika Conradie (June 2012), Elgin Rust’s ‘Appeal 2012’ curated in collaboration with guerilla gallery (September 2012), ‘Basha Uhuru’ curated by Kalishnikov Gallery (June 2013), he collaborated with Mandy Johnston for ‘Diptych’ curated by Assemblage (September 2013) and most recently exhibited on Absa L’Atelier (2014). He has also executed public interventions ‘Lest We Forget’ at the Drill Hall, Johannesburg, in collaboration with Jabulani Matthews Tshuma (February 2014) as well as an installation intervention ‘Graphoasis’ at Afrika Burn in collaboration with Elgin Rust (May 2014). In February 2013, Sandile participated as invited speaker for the Goethe-Institut’s ‘New Imaginaries/ New Publics’ symposium convened by UCT’s African Centre for Cities (ACC).

Sandile Radebe

Untitled Pillar (2012)
cardboard
Process image: ‘Appeal 2012’
Photo: Kim Gurney

Curator

Kim Gurney is an artist, journalist and researcher, based in Cape Town. Kim has held two solo exhibitions in Johannesburg and participates annually on group exhibitions - the most recent at Iziko SA Museum (‘Suspicious Mind’, 2014). She engages with other artists primarily as a curator of experimental and emergent work. In 2012, for instance, she curated ‘Sounding Out’ with Thato Mogotsi at the Bag Factory — a riff on music and visual art that included pirate radio airtime as exhibition space. She founded in 2012 a nomadic offspace, guerilla gallery, which doesn’t have its own bricks and mortar. That is how she came to know Sandile Radebe, who participated on its inaugural project, Elgin Rust’s ‘Appeal 2012’, held in a Doornfontein warehouse with a dozen participating Johannesburg artists. Kim also writes selectively as a freelance journalist and for the past three years has been affiliated as a Research Associate to UCT’s African Centre for Cities, and UJ’s Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre. A book on art, space and publics is forthcoming (Palgrave Macmillan).

Kim Gurney

Research trip for ‘Cape Town Under: The Third Voice’ (2013)
Photo: Matt Weisse