In November 2018, as part of the In Conversation programme, The Centre for the Less Good Idea hosted a conversation between its founder William Kentridge, and Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto.

A mutual love for the sculptor Alexander Calder – whose rotating sculptures inspired Kentridge’s Waiting for the Sibyl project – opens the evening and leads to playful discussions on balance, form, movement, mark-making, the body and more.

The resultant informal and free-spirited discussion between the two artists can be seen as taking a form similar to that of Neto’s own sprawling sculptural work. Conversation stretches, takes off in different directions, grows abundant and drops down from time to time into rich, concentrated pockets.

Over the course of the conversation, Kentridge and Neto muse over a vast array of topics ranging from sport and politics by way of the 2014 Fifa World Cup in Brazil, to museum fires and land debates that spark further discussion on the relationship between knowledge, history and periphery thought in art-making and ways of seeing the world.

Ultimately, the hour-long event is as much a dedicated discussion on certain prompts and points of conversation as it is a spontaneous and spirited pursuit of seemingly disparate thoughts and gestures towards rich and productive ends.

– Hemali Khoosal & David Mann

CREDITS:

PROJECT MANAGER | Shruthi Nair
STAGE MANAGER | Hayleigh Evans & POPArt Productions