In September 2018 The Centre for the Less Good Idea, in association with the Goodman Gallery and the FNB Joburg Art Fair, played host to a conversation between Yinka Shonibare MBE and William Kentridge as part of its In Conversation programme.

Over the course of their 50-minute conversation, the two artists discuss everything from death, theatricality and collaboration, to the last supper and the opera. There is a remarkable resonance in the work of both Shonibare and Kentridge, with both artists being interested in similar images and ways of making art, although very often through disparate impulses or avenues of thought. Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Swing, the notion of the black ballerina and the work of William Hogarth are a few examples of sources of inspiration and inquiry for both artists.

The idea of the opera as a medium that allows for emotion and for the poetic to be dealt with head-on is another point of conversation, as is the studio as a space of physical and emotional comfort that functions as a safe space for play, experimentation and failure. Similarly, a practice and studio environment that both embraces and encourages collaboration and the extension of itself into an alternative and accessible space for the arts is something that both artists work towards in their respective cities.

While Kentridge may be a South African artist and Shonibare a London-based artist of African origin, the two discover a remarkable degree of overlapping and intersecting interests and methodologies. One possible reason for this, they explain, could be a similarity of temperament – embracing hybridity rather than working towards purity or essentialism in one’s work.

– David Mann

CREDITS:

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