Roots of Expression

Alliance Francaise will be hosting this sculpture exhibition opening tomorrow 18:00 hrs (CAT).

A full review will appear in The Art Pages next month

Wednesday Cartoon

Here's our cartoons series, resuming after a brief hiatus. We are all pretty busy right now at the gallery working on the new paper amongst other things. Check back later for news updates.

The Art Pages – An Update

Work is going well, we already have two articles currently being edited as well as photos. So far contributors have been respectful of deadlines and been attending our meetings.

The key work right now is to look for funding for subsequent issues of the paper. We have managed to scrape together enough to publish our first issue but after that we need another source of funding. We are looking into some grants from embassies that have a keen interest in supporting the arts, but these grants can take some months to be approved. So we are have to be creative. We have a possible idea for raising some money but this idea is still in its early stages, stay tuned for more!

Despite these financial issues we are so heartened by the amount of support we are receiving from artists who feel this kind of newspaper is long overdue. For them and many others, we will continue the work.

We are also working on a website that will help promote The Art Pages, this is still very much under construction and we have to make allowances for our temperamental internet, but it is definitely getting there.

Kwathu Exhibition

The Birth of The Art Pages

I was jetlagged and decidedly underwhelmed at finding myself back in Lusaka. Nevertheless I dragged myself into the gallery as I had promised. And this was a good thing.

We had a great deal to catch up on as I had been away for over two weeks, and I was full of stories of the art community in Asheville. I was especially eager to tell them about all the great free art and culture magazines I found in the area.

After much discussion we came to the conclusion that our blog, although nice in its way is simply not reaching local people. This is unsurprising considering how expensive the internet is here – no fibre optics and it is slow as can be. My good colleague Zenzele happened to have with him an art newspaper called 'Art Bakery' that he had picked up during a residency in Cameroon with Goddy Leye. It was a simple, 4 page publication in black and white.

With my inspiration from Asheville and Zenzele's from Cameroon, we realised we had a very special opportunity. And so our art paper idea blossomed.

To be continued...