In March 2018, as part of the In Conversation programme, The Centre for the Less Good Idea hosted a conversation between Sam Nhlengethwa and William Kentridge, moderated by Goodman Gallery’s Neil Dundas.

Over the course of the conversation, Nhlengethwa and Kentridge discuss their love for music, their early memories of growing up in South Africa and the significant moments and sources of inspiration in their early careers. Running throughout and alongside the conversation is a vital thread that ties together the key points of the 1976 Soweto Uprising, the Johannesburg Art Foundation (JAF) and The Market Theatre, and how all of this has impacted the lives and careers of both artists.

Nhlengethwa and Kentridge were born in the same year, and into the same era of South African political history. Central to their mutual history is the story of the JAF, founded by Bill Ainslie in the 1980s as a space that prized the kind of practical and widely accessible arts education that was crucially lacking in South Africa at the time. It was at the JAF that the two artists would work on their respective crafts and establish connections to galleries and collectors alike.

The two artists also discuss how their individual journeys to the JAF may have been remarkably different, but their subsequent careers followed similar trajectories, with both artists hosting their debut exhibitions at The Market Theatre, exhibiting internationally through anti-apartheid shows, going on to work with the Goodman Gallery and ultimately expressing an urgent and vital desire to assist contemporary artists in Johannesburg in ways similar to the JAF.

Punctuating the conversation are brief moments of music that allow for each artist, as well as the audience, to pause and reflect on the relationship between the movements in music and movement in the studio.

– David Mann

CREDITS:

CINEMATOGRAPHER | Kutlwano Makgalemele
PROJECT MANAGER | Shruthi Nair
LIGHTING DESIGNERS | Wesley France & Guy Nelson
STAGE MANAGER | Hayleigh Evans & POPArt Productions