Intraparadox Side Bar…

Image Credit: courtesy of Olwethu de Vos

[Hi], old friends and new friends, it is great to have you here. Olwethu de Vos, curator and multi-media artist who is conversant with two-dimensional pieces that defies flatness mixed media and sculpture, will unveil a solo project in collaboration with the City of Joburg, Matured, on 28 August 2025. Visiting her Instagram account @odeforceart, you will notice a couple of snippets of the upcoming exhibition, one of them a short reel of her working on a sculpture, presumably one of the works to be featured in her upcoming show. Matured is timeous in the light of the upcoming FNB Joburg Art Fair and it slots snugly into the fair’s, for lack of a better adjective, ‘side tapestry’, Open City.

Explore the >side bar< to the right under the ‘happening soon’ heading on this website to learn more. Or click on the words open city in the previous paragraph. You can’t miss it, like all hyperlinked text it’s in blue! Honestly speaking, I am writerly sluggish these days. That is, if you have been making a turn to this site and wondered about the gaping silence since the last blog post. However, with a couple of podcasts in post-production queue, I am inclined to say I am officially between projects. New work will surely be posted soon. Feel free to experience old pieces under Recent Interception side bar in case you missed a blogpost. Do keep your other eye on the WhatsOnOutThere to stay abreast some of the invites that have landed in the Intraparadox email inbox.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to have a preview of the exhibition Visual Languages, which opens tomorrow morning at 11:00 at Die Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns (South African Academy for Science and Art). The academy is located at 570 Ziervogel Street, Arcadia, which is a walk away from the Union Buildings. The exhibition has been jointly curated by Janine Allen and Jan van der Merwe. It showcases works by postgraduate students and the staff of the Visual Arts Department at the University of the Free State. Digital art, mixed media, photography, lithography and pencil drawings carry various visual messages that comprise this exhibition. Unlike Jan van der Merwe’s previous curatorial effort at the same space, Retired Muses, for a group exhibition, this exhibition looks and feels looser in terms of the number of works featured. The works cover personal issues as well as sociocultural issues in their diverse enterprises. A common thread that runs through the body of work on show is the unique approach to artmaking that each artist has employed in bringing the artworks to life. Visual Languages will run until 14 November. You may listen to the podcast of my conversation with the curators [here].