Visit us at Paris Photo, Stand B26, where we are showing work by Simon Gush!
In his text and photographic series 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘠𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘑𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘺, Simon Gush travels to Maputo, Mozambique, where he encounters the history of the shifting mechanisms of labour and the range of forces that contributed to shaping it. The work traces these from the Voortrekker Louis Trichardt, who made the journey over the border in 1838, to the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association, Wenela, formed by the South African gold mines in 1897 to recruit workers from neighbouring countries, via the 20th century, when new lines were drawn by the Cold War and tensions arose with the self-determined Mozambique, and on to the present, where Chinese construction companies and labour remodel Maputo according to new values and ethics.
𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘠𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘑𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘺, 𝘚𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘐, 2015
Silver gelatin on aluminium
Framed size: 30 x 43.5 each
Edition of 1 + 1AP
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@parisphotofair@simongush
SWOP Lunch Break:
In Common …
An open discussion on the restitution of land and work
28 June 2025
12:00 - 14:00
Ntsikana Gallery
Monument Building
Makhanda
The lunch break marks a pause in the working day … a time for rest from production … for forms of exchange not, yet, for-profit… for relations to be, but, in common, often shaped by reciprocities … learned at home … not work … but, yet work that matters to be … differently …
Hosted by the Society, Work and Politics Institute, the Lunch Break will be a space to be together in common … to eat together … for dialogue and discussion … to imagine what might yet be… At the centre of the ArtTalk will be the idea of restitution. Restitution returns to our collective past, acknowledges the inequalities of our present and seeks paths to a different yet to come … Yet … the formal, legal and institutional processes of restitution have not taken full account of what was dispossessed. It has reduced the land to a capitalist commodity, forgetting that work was dispossessed along with the land, and looks away while dispossession continues. The conversation will draw on the work of Simon Gush’s films and artworks around the dispossession of land and work in Salem, Niren Tolsi’s work on the enclosure, land dispossession and cricket in Salem, Eastern Cape, contained in his book, “Writing around the Wicket”, and Dineo Skosana in her recently published book “No Last Place to Rest,” which addresses ongoing dispossession and grave relocations in mining-affected communities in post-apartheid South Africa.
Lunch will be provided.
Link for tickets in bio.
Tomorrow @thelabia , Simon Gush, Niren Tolsi and Phumelele Mkhize will be screening their film 𝘠𝘦𝘵..., 𝘈𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯… (2025). The films will be accompanied by excerpts from other films and media.
The screening will take place on Thursday 20 March at 6pm.
Simon Gush (@simongush ) is an artist, filmmaker and researcher with the Society, Work and Politics Institute (SWOP), University of Witwatersrand. His work explores the intertwined topics of work (waged and unwaged), land, home, and belonging.
Niren Tolsi (@nirentolsi ) is a 48-year-old South African journalist, writer and arts practitioner based in Cape Town. His major work is the ongoing multi-disciplinary “slow journalism” project, After Marikana, which, for over a decade has constantly returned to the families and surviving comrades of the 44 men who were killed during a police massacre of striking mineworkers at a platinum mine in Marikana in 2012.
Phumelele Mkhize is an activist from the eKhenana Commune in Mayville, Durban. She has lived in eKhenana since 2018 and serves as the Commune’s secretary.
The eKhenana Commune is facing attacks from local taxi owners and others because they want to use the land for their own benefit. At eKhenana projects include a communal garden, com-munal poultry farming and a communal kitchen to make sure that no one goes to bed with an empty stomach.
Mkhize has been jailed for fighting for the impoverished and to build an equal society. In No-vember 2022 Mkhize received the Southern Human Rights Defender of the Year Award on be-half of the eKhenana Commune, in Lusaka, Zambia.
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@simongush@nirentolsi@thelabia@afterimage_screenings
#phumelelemkhize
Poster design 🎨: @tiffanyjoyschouw
You were the kindest and most generous person I have ever known. I wish very conversation we had had been 5 minutes longer. That I could have accumulated more time with you. I am so grateful you let me be your friend. I miss you so much Prishani.
You have become both young and old at once. You are Untimely
𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘴 𝘔𝘦𝘦𝘵 is on show in Cape Town until 8 February!
The three works in this grouping, through various media and from different times, depict the complexities of labour and work in a country like South Africa: who is seen and who isn’t, who is rewarded and who is not. The oldest work is a small painting by Captain Neville Lewis (1895–1972) who served in World War I, later becoming South Africa’s first appointed war artist by the War Art Advisory Committee in 1943. In the three years that he spent in this role, he travelled between South Africa and the battlefronts in East and North Africa. In 𝘖𝘯 𝘣𝘰𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱, he paints a subject seldom recorded – the participation, and thus recognition, of black soldiers in the world wars. The painting depicts four men washing on the deck of a ship. The work evokes the Quattrocento period with its palette, painterly style and the reduced treatment of perspective.
David Goldblatt’s oeuvre is populated by images of labour – in mines, farm and shops. Goldblatt took the 𝘚𝘵𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘥𝘰𝘳𝘦, 𝘋𝘶𝘳𝘣𝘢𝘯 (3_7302) photograph in 1953, at the age of 23, when he was just starting out on his lifetime’s work of documenting the complex racial history of South Africa. It depicts a dockworker in Durban – a place the photographer frequented often due to his love for ships and sailing – loading and unloading cargo. The compositional focus on the worker’s powerful arms is one that recurs in classical sculpture and monuments, much like the contested monuments throughout South Africa. In an echoing discussion of labour and masculinity, the city of Johannesburg’s monuments to mining are depicted in 𝘐𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘺𝘰𝘶, a short essay film by Simon Gush. The film questions what is at stake in the visibility and invisibility of labour, the artist seeking to analyse the nature of work itself in its political and ideological dimensions – with considerable self-reflection.
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#whenworksmeet
@simongush
#davidgoldblatt
#alfrednevillelewis
