Ivor Powell

Sculpture and Photomontage

Jane Alexander

Ndebele - A People & Their Art is a beautifully illustrated study of the Ndebele and their distinctive art culture. Exceptional photography and insightful text have combined to make this a fascinating and visually exciting work that will have great appeal for all those with an interest in the tribal cultures of southern Africa and of the Ndebele in particular. Endowed with a rich creativity, Ndebele women have developed an art culture of remarkable ingenuity and vitality which has established their tribal grouping as Africa's artist nation. In their beadwork and in the large murals that cover the walls of their traditional mud dwellings - many of which are unusually innovative in their planning and construction - the Ndebele women have created bold, often symbolic, designs and images that are at one ancient and modern in their simplicity, colour and mode of representation. The traditional dress of Ndebele women is equally striking and dramatic, as are their beadwork and adornments. But the artistic achievements of the Ndebele are not the sole focus of the work. Equal emphasis is placed on an understanding of the historical, social and political background against which Ndebele art emerged and has flourished.

A People & Their Art

Ndebele

Mark Lewis

Fotografisk billedværk i farver om NDebele folket og deres kunsthåndværk og udsmykninger og bemalinger af huse, klæder, skilte m.v.

Ernest Cole

Struan Robertson

"Ernest Cole (1940-1990) believed passionately in his mission to tell the world in photographs what it was like and what it meant to be black under apartheid. He identified intimately with his own people in photographs of unsurpassed strength and gravitas. With imaginative daring, courage and compassion, he portrayed the full range of experience of black people as they negotiated their lives through the insanity of apartheid and its racist laws and oppression. In order to publish his book, House of Bondage, Cole went into exile. Immediately after it came out in 1967, it was banned in South Africa and this major critique of apartheid has hardly been seen in his own country since. Cole died in New York in 1990 after more than 23 years of painful exile, never having returned to South Africa and leaving no known negatives and few prints of his monumental work. Tio fotografer, an association of photographers with whom Cole worked from 1969 to 1975 when his place of residence was Stockholm, received a collection of his prints and these were later donated to the Hasselblad Foundation. These extremely rare prints, most of them made by Cole himself and most never previously exhibited, form the core of this exhibition and book. This book tells the story of Ernest Cole's life, both in his own words and through the reminiscences and writings of those people who knew him personally and professionally." -- Back cover.

Ivor Powell

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