News
Interview of artist Mankebe Seakgoe exploring her process and practice on SABC News 10/03/2024
Bahati Simoens on discusses her new exhibition Sunset Market on SABC News 24/02/2024
Sethembile Msezane interviewed on her exhibition Liguqubele iZulu 15/04/2023
Artwork by Earl Abrahams
HABIT AT ONLINE GROUP EXHIBITION AT BKHZ
WORDS - Palesa Kgasane - VISI
As the world changes, isolation takes centre stage and viewers’ experiences of art have become confined to the digital space. How do artists express themselves during this new self-reflexive zeitgeist and what happens to our understanding of the creator’s habitat? It is these questions that this exhibition seeks to answer by bringing the viewer closer to the artist’s world, to observe their process and how changing habitat has played a role in re-imagining their work in a shifting society.
The online exhibition features a virtual 3D display of work from 13 artists, including Thebe Magugu, Wonder Buhle, Sarah Walmsley, Jodi Bieber, Cole Ndelu, Lunga Ntila and Earl Abrahams. Through the eyes of the artists, whose work ranges from painting to sculpture, we are invited not only to view their work, but also their thoughts on navigating the art world as it is today. “I currently don’t have a permanent studio, but I make it work with a table and the tools of the trade,’’ reflects one artist Katlego Tlabela, whose paintings depict his home, including a striking piece featuring the expansive collection of books written by black authors.
artwork by Katlego Tlabela
‘Habit at’ | a group show complicating notions of the natural, constructed & sacred
WORDS - Lindiwe Mngxitama - Bubblegumclub
How we began to conceptually define these ideas in relation to the group exhibition was to gather a group of diverse artists who work and think through different mediums and have diverse approaches to process and the spaces in which they produce in. When we did this it was evident that the idea of what was “natural” for these individuals varied. This complicated the preconceived and often stereotypical idea of “the artist” as a recluse crafting in their “natural environment” which is often understood to be an enclosed environment isolated from society. This myth often denies artists a sense of personhood and humanity, elucidates Papi Oratile Konopi, curator and member of BKhz Gallery while walking me through some of the conceptual tenants and points of provocation the new group exhibition titled Habit at was figured in relation to.
ONLINE EXHIBITION: JUSTICE MUKHELI X HEIDI FOURIE AT BKHZ
WORDS Cheri Morris - VISI
Joburg-based gallery BKhz is hosting an online exhibition featuring the work of artist and filmmaker Justice Mukheli and painter Heidi Fourie, titled Quiet Observations.
In Quiet Observations, Joburg-based Justice Mukheli seeks to put a spotlight on the authentic African experience and dismantle oppressive narratives about Africa and Africans. His piece, You Have To See Us, is testament to this. Justice elaborates, “The base idea in my work is dismantling the idea of what Africa is to the rest of the world, dismantling the idea of blackness and the black body, dismantling these stereotypes. So I created these works almost from an eye of exoticising, but my eye was humanising these black figures and seeing them for what they are rather than celebrating a type of body that is seen as glorious because it is seen as African.
Reinventing the art scene
WORDS Londi Modiko and Lara Kosseff - Sunday Times
In an environment that calls for a reinvention of the art scene, Londi Modiko and Lara Kosseff consider artist-led spaces in Joburg that are way ahead of the pack
BKHZ POP-UP IN CAPE TOWN
WORDS Amelia Brown
Joburg-based gallery and creative studio BKhz is curating a group show titled Blue Is The Warmest Colour at its first pop-up in the Mother City.
Located in Braamfontein, BKhz Studio was founded in 2018 by artist Banele Khoza (read our Artists We Love interview with him here) as a space to both create and display his art and as a platform for emerging artists and curators. Since its establishment, the BKhz brand has committed itself to expanding the perception of contemporary art in South Africa, providing space, visibility, time and support to established and emerging artists.
Photograph by Tatenda Chidora
Blue is the Warmest Colour // BKhz Testing Waters in the Peninsula
WORDS Gemma Hart - Bubblegumclub
Figurative elements emerge in smokey hues, lips poised and blue. An elsewhere-gaze and portrait glazed with azure shades. A portrait veiled, a leaning tower lists towards the heavens. While another is inscribed with crimson text of unanswered questions. Illuminated, light cascades beyond windowpanes onto crisp white walls primed for exhibition. ‘Blue is the Warmest Colour’ offers a plethora of hues and thematic starting point.
When she made her debut into the art world, Lunga Ntila did not feel welcome. (Delwyn Verasamy/ M&G)
Art in the era of influencers
WORDS Zaza Hlalethwa - Mail and Guardian
Most professions require a licence, permit or reputable training before one can, by law, start practicing that occupation. This applies to a variety of professions —but not to artists.
Now that the internet has democratised information and gatekeepers are confronted with calls to decolonise spaces, an industry that doesn’t require licensing finds itself opening up to various affectations of artistry.
The Mail & Guardian spoke to several cogs in the machine that is South Africa’s contemporary art scene to gauge how the label “artist” is earned and whether social media platforms are gearing up to become the white cubes of the next decade.
BKhz Gallery Presents Mashudu Nevhutalu’s Archives of Colour
WORDS Between 10and5 on Nov 29, 2019 in exhibition, Featured, News, Pulse
We keep moving, from point A to B. We shuffle in the hopes of making it to the desired finale, far from our beginnings. We suppress the involuntary flashbacks of our shared past to avoid being slowed down by things we cannot change. What good is remembering what is fixed in stone while having access to the enigmatic fluidity of the now?
Titled Archives of Colour, contemporary artist, art teacher and Tshwane University of Technology alumnus Mashudu Nevhutalu’s first solo exhibition adjusts the lens with which South Africa can remember its domestic, but collective history.
BKhz’s New Group Exhibition Muses on Identity, Religion, Sexuality & Politics
Written by Between 10and5 on Oct 29, 2019 in Art, exhibition, Pulse
To appreciate BKhz’s new group exhibition, you must be prepared to savor language in its complexities. Eleven artists working in different media addressing disparate topics that demonstrate their diverse considerations of the role of language in their works. Through BKhz’s curatorial choice of these artists and the method through which they employ text in their work, it’s apparent how this could begin to facilitate for “mixing of messages”. This exhibition illuminates how language is uniquely elevated in the search for new, different, and effective forms of artistic expression and communication.
Art Week’s daring new darling
Zaza Hlalethwa 13 Sep 2019 00:00
In the two years that she has been in the game, 24-year-old conceptual photographer Lunga Ntila’s name has been synonymous with the practice of distortion. Armed with a Nikon D5200 camera, natural light, a fabric backdrop and Adobe Photoshop, Ntila takes what Australian photographer Sorelle Amore refers to as the advanced selfie and places it in the territories of collage-making as well as expressionism and cubism.
She takes a photograph of her face, then cuts, deletes, duplicates, elongates and pastes features where they do not belong. The result is a body of work titled Ukuzilanda.
The Zeitgeist Exhibition | The Present is the Future
Phendu Kuta | August 3, 2019
The Zeitgeist is an exhibition and showcase currently showing at BKhz gallery and studio curated by the founder and visual artist Banele Khoza. Khoza's background in fashion and his awareness of the evolution of the fashion industry influenced creating the exhibition.
"I started noticing the fact that ready-to-wear has become more prominent, especially in the South African context. And even internationally with less design houses doing couture, whereas couture is normally the front-face of a brand. Then I started looking into South Africa and noticed that designers are now focusing on ready-to-wear and what will look good if its worn by someone such as an influencer or a celebrity. And then for me, that immediately signaled the idea of the death of couture and I felt like whoa, that can't be happening.
Designers have mentioned that there is no market for couture, like yes, you can do it, but no one is redefining couture. And then I had the question; how do you facilitate a space for that?"
Representations of the nude with BKhz’s ‘Metamorphosis’
by Marcia Elizabeth / 29 JULY 2019
Just over a week ago I entered through the door of BKhz. From the moment the two shows, The Zeitgeist curated by Banele Khoza and Metamorphosis curated by Nkhensani Mkhari opened to he public there was a steady movement of bodies entering the space. We watched two models as they performed for The Zeitgeist. In the back room as you walk in you are instantly halted by the larger than life photographic representation of a femme nude by Jody Brand. Engaging with Metamorphosisis cathartic as you are reminded of what you are when stripped down to your essence–our bodies are sleeves. Beautiful vessels that carry our souls… our bodies are in a constant state of change.
Banele Khoza – The Painter of Love
by Marcia Elizabeth / 2 MONTHS AGO
Banele Khoza’s figurative abstraction depicts colourful portraits of the male nude—obscure ghostly figures in a palette of mostly pink and blue. The acrylic pigments are combined and blurred together in fervent brushstrokes that seem to be applied with acute sensitivity, but also a sense of the uninhibited. They bleed and drip into empty spaces, while pencil sketch marks reveal compositional form.
BKhz’s ‘Process’ // Ways of Becoming
GEMMA HART / 2 MONTHS AGO
he process of process includes not only emerging and quantifiable forms, but also the intellectual, emotional, and tangible experience of process which is not necessarily sequential.
– Jack Richardson and Sydney Walker (2011)
Fluid brushstrokes of grey and green abstraction punctuate pastel-pink walls. Adjacent blank canvases lie in wait for the artist’s hand. The sound of a saw and casual conversation reverberates through the space. A constellation of clamps, chisels, and hammers are peppered by wood flakes and off-cuts – encircling a map of making. BKhz is in a state of process. Reminiscent of Deleuze’s philosophical concept of ‘becoming’, the ongoing and ever developing show is rooted in artists’ practice.
BKhz Gallery’s ‘Process’ Exhibition with Iconic Artists
BY: TYRONE FISHER | 18 JUNE, 2019 | BETWEEN 10and5
In keeping with their primary objective to provide an alternative exhibition space to emerging and established artists, Braamfontein gallery BKhz hosted the aptly titled Process. The exhibition stems from an intrigue with the manner in which visual artists create worlds through their practice.
In this exhibition, the artists, including Lady $kollie, Mashudu Nevhutalu, Chris Soal, Sharon Moses, Allen Laing, Ke Neil We, XiaoCheng Hu, Tatenda Chidora and Matt Hazell were requested to engage the space by creating works that highlighted their process.
Banele Khoza explains his conceptual space in braamfontein
BY: GARRETH VAN NIEKERK | 05 SEPTEMBER, 2018 | HOUSE AND LEISURE
Artist Banele Khoza recently opened up his own space, BKhz, in Braamfontein – an exciting mix of design from neighbouring designers in the suburb, alongside a collection of his own artworks, and group exhibitions created via ongoing collaborations with other artists and friends. House and Leisure caught up with Banele this week to better understand his multifaceted approach to the space.
Creating Spaces with South African Artist Banele Khoza
BY: PROTOCHIC | 30 AUGUST, 2018 | PROTOCHIC
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Contemporary artist Banele Khoza opened his design workshop and art gallery BKhz Studio earlier this month at 68 Juta Street right off the Nelson Mandela Bridge in Braamfontein. Describing the opening of this creative space as a "12 year prayer, dream and goal," Khoza sheds light on the significance of black ownership within a country fraught with historic racial inequity
BKhz studio beckons to passers-by
BY: ZAZA HLALETHWA | 21 SEPTEMBER 2018 | MAIL AND GUARDIAN
‘Can I just call it a space? Perhaps it’s a mixture of a gallery, a studio and a project space. I don’t know the actual answer to this question yet.”
It is just after 09:30 on a Thursday morning and this is the first thing fine artist Banele Khoza says when asked what he would call his new creative space.
A Letter To My 22-Year-Old Self
BY: CREATIVE FEEL
Through an eye-opening new exhibition at the Absa Gallery from 11 November 2018 to 25 January 2019, Banele Khoza shines the light on the difficulties experienced by young creatives trying to obtain an education and start their careers. One of the most promising artists to have come out of the Absa L’Atelier art competition in recent years, Khoza has curated a group exhibition that will give the next generation hope and see the development of a new foundation to provide financial help and guidance to young creatives.
Exhibition at Absa Art Gallery aims to help struggling artists
BY: CITIZEN REPORTER | 6 DECEMBER, 2018 | THE CITIZEN
A multifaceted exhibition rooted in one of the most pressing challenges facing South Africa today – the support and empowerment of young creative artists – is currently being presented at the Absa art gallery.
Titled A Letter to My 22-year-old Self, the exhibition speaks to the moving personal story of Absa L’Atelier award winner Banele Khoza and his struggle to find his way as a young artist and financially support himself through his passion.
SA artists get behind Banele Khoza’s vision to help young creative artists in new Absa Gallery showcase
BY: STAFF REPORTER | 06 NOVEMBER, 2018 | CITY BUZZ
The Absa Gallery will round off a successful year with a multifaceted exhibition rooted in one of the most pressing challenges facing South Africa today – the support and empowerment of young creative artists. Titled, A letter to my 22-year-old self, the exhibition speaks to the moving personal story of Absa L’Atelier award winner, Banele Khoza and his struggle to find his way as a young artist and financially support himself through his passion.