From the beginniong Fine Lines from the Box traces a journey of the mind and an ongoing exercise of reading and writing by one of South Africa's most incisive commentators. Taken with Njabulo Ndebele's earlier Rediscovery of the Ordinary, this collection challenges, entreats, cajoles and prods one into understanding a range of issues - the loss of innocence in achieving a ' new South Africa', the President and the AIDS question, higher education and the liberal tradition, the place of English in modern South Africa, that African icon Brenda Fassie, the vagaries of journalism, and the time in the life of a country when the oppressed must free the oppressor. Covering a span of eighteen years from 1987 to 2006 these pieces cut to the nation's quick. They provide a sane view of our recent past and explain much about what often seems to a baffling present.

From the beginniong Fine Lines from the Box traces a journey of the mind and an ongoing exercise of reading and writing by one of South Africa's most incisive commentators. Taken with Njabulo Ndebele's earlier Rediscovery of the Ordinary, this collection challenges, entreats, cajoles and prods one into understanding a range of issues - the loss of innocence in achieving a ' new South Africa', the President and the AIDS question, higher education and the liberal tradition, the place of English in modern South Africa, that African icon Brenda Fassie, the vagaries of journalism, and the time in the life of a country when the oppressed must free the oppressor. Covering a span of eighteen years from 1987 to 2006 these pieces cut to the nation's quick. They provide a sane view of our recent past and explain much about what often seems to a baffling present.

With her earliest work, Penny Siopis established herself as one of the most talented and challenging visual artists in and beyond South Africa. Penny Siopis: Time and Again engages in a variety of ways with her work of the past thirty-five years. A conversation between the artist and the editor, Gerrit Olivier, unfolds throughout the book, giving the reader fascinating insights into her working methods, her strong interest in form and different genres, her theoretical concerns and her views on the position of art in a socio-political context. The first chapter by Achille Mbembe, on her latest work, considers how creation takes hold in the wake of loss. Siopis’s abiding interest in what she calls ‘the poetics of vulnerability’ – manifest in a tension between materiality and image – coalesces with her explorations of history, sexuality, race, memory, estrangement and violence in her paintings, installations and films. With reference to works such as Patience on a Monument, Pinky Pinky, Shame, My Lovely Day, ObscureWhite Messenger and Communion, these themes are explored in commentaries by TJ Demos, Jennifer Law, Njabulo Ndebele, Sarah Nuttall, Griselda Pollock and Colin Richards. A conversation between Siopis and William Kentridge illuminates the trajectory of their own work and that of South African art. The elegant design of the book showcases what Alessandra De Angelis calls the ‘incredible beauty’ of Siopis’s work. The vibrant imagery is testimony to Siopis’s ability to combine profound ideas with forms that have a visceral impact on the viewer. As suggested by the title, this book is a stitching together of memory and the promise of return, of loss and creation in a process of perpetual renewal.

From the beginniong Fine Lines from the Box traces a journey of the mind and an ongoing exercise of reading and writing by one of South Africa's most incisive commentators. Taken with Njabulo Ndebele's earlier Rediscovery of the Ordinary, this collection challenges, entreats, cajoles and prods one into understanding a range of issues - the loss of innocence in achieving a ' new South Africa', the President and the AIDS question, higher education and the liberal tradition, the place of English in modern South Africa, that African icon Brenda Fassie, the vagaries of journalism, and the time in the life of a country when the oppressed must free the oppressor. Covering a span of eighteen years from 1987 to 2006 these pieces cut to the nation's quick. They provide a sane view of our recent past and explain much about what often seems to a baffling present.

From the beginniong Fine Lines from the Box traces a journey of the mind and an ongoing exercise of reading and writing by one of South Africa's most incisive commentators. Taken with Njabulo Ndebele's earlier Rediscovery of the Ordinary, this collection challenges, entreats, cajoles and prods one into understanding a range of issues - the loss of innocence in achieving a ' new South Africa', the President and the AIDS question, higher education and the liberal tradition, the place of English in modern South Africa, that African icon Brenda Fassie, the vagaries of journalism, and the time in the life of a country when the oppressed must free the oppressor. Covering a span of eighteen years from 1987 to 2006 these pieces cut to the nation's quick. They provide a sane view of our recent past and explain much about what often seems to a baffling present.

With her earliest work, Penny Siopis established herself as one of the most talented and challenging visual artists in and beyond South Africa. Penny Siopis: Time and Again engages in a variety of ways with her work of the past thirty-five years. A conversation between the artist and the editor, Gerrit Olivier, unfolds throughout the book, giving the reader fascinating insights into her working methods, her strong interest in form and different genres, her theoretical concerns and her views on the position of art in a socio-political context. The first chapter by Achille Mbembe, on her latest work, considers how creation takes hold in the wake of loss. Siopis’s abiding interest in what she calls ‘the poetics of vulnerability’ – manifest in a tension between materiality and image – coalesces with her explorations of history, sexuality, race, memory, estrangement and violence in her paintings, installations and films. With reference to works such as Patience on a Monument, Pinky Pinky, Shame, My Lovely Day, ObscureWhite Messenger and Communion, these themes are explored in commentaries by TJ Demos, Jennifer Law, Njabulo Ndebele, Sarah Nuttall, Griselda Pollock and Colin Richards. A conversation between Siopis and William Kentridge illuminates the trajectory of their own work and that of South African art. The elegant design of the book showcases what Alessandra De Angelis calls the ‘incredible beauty’ of Siopis’s work. The vibrant imagery is testimony to Siopis’s ability to combine profound ideas with forms that have a visceral impact on the viewer. As suggested by the title, this book is a stitching together of memory and the promise of return, of loss and creation in a process of perpetual renewal.