Gavin Jantjes

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Gavin Jantjes (born 1948 in District Six, Cape Town) is a South African painter, curator, writer and lecturer.[1]

Life

Jantjes attended the

Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg between 1970 and 1972. He was a founding member of the German anti-apartheid movement. He was granted political asylum in Germany in 1973. He worked as a consultant visual campaign director for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
from 1978 to 1982. In 1979 he published the South African Colouring Book, which consisted of eleven collaged serigraphs exploring apartheid in the format of a child's coloring book.

He moved his studio to Wiltshire, England in 1982. In 1986 he was appointed a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at

Serpentine Gallery
from 1995 until 1998.

He became artistic director of the

Carlos Capelan
.

In 2004 he joined the

National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, as its Senior Consultant for International Contemporary Exhibitions: he curated exhibitions there on Amar Kanwar, Harun Farocki and Nicholas Hlobo
. He was also the Project Director of the Visual Century Project on 20th Century and contemporary South African resulting in the publication, Visual Century: South African Art in Context (2011).

He left the National Museum in 2014 and reopened his studio in Oslo in 2015. He continues to paint, moving between Cape Town, England and Oslo.

Exhibitions

One man shows of work by Gavin Jantjes include:

  • 1970 The Artists Gallery, Cape Town
  • 1976 Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London and Henie Onstad Art Centre, Hovikodden
  • 1977 Provinciehuis, Groningen
  • 1978 Kulturhuset, Stockholm
  • 1979 Kunsterhaus Bethanien, Berlin
  • 1980–3, 1986, 1990 Edward Totah Gallery, London
  • 1984 Midland Group, Nottingham
  • 1985 Black Art Gallery, London
  • 1987 Blue Coat Gallery, Liverpool
  • 1988 Herbert Museum and Art Gallery, Coventry
  • 1989 City Museums and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent
  • 2024 Whitechapel Gallery, London

Collections

Jantjes’ work in is the collections of Tate Britain, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Arts Council Collection; Wolverhampton Art Gallery; Coventry City Museum; National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Publications

A Fruitful Incoherence: Dialogues with Artists on Internationalism / [edited by Gavin Jantjes in association with Rohini Malik, Steve Bury and Gilane Tawadros] London: INIVA, 1998.

WorldCat no. 39931382

References

External links

Black Artists & Modernism: http://www.blackartistsnodernism.co.uk/dossier/gavin-jantjes/