Goya Africa London: our latest Goya and Africa project
Early this year we were delighted to receive a grant from our US patrons to extend our Goya and Africa project to London. The idea was to run three workshops in an ethnically-diverse and economically-deprived area of London, introducing young people to the work of Francisco de Goya. We hoped that this would offer them a new source of inspiration for their own creative practice and encourage them to consider career opportunities in the arts and creative industries.
Our partners in the project are a small group of young creatives who run the Real Art School, a free, community-led creative education space for young people (average age 16 - 25), until recently based at the Camden Open Air Gallery. They have been an ideal partner as they already have a following on social media. The group aims to breakdown barriers to arts education and mentorship, making opportunities and industry insight accessible. Their sessions have until now focussed entirely on contemporary artists drawn from similar ethnic and economic groups as the participants. These bi-weekly sessions often feature artists from a range of media, including rap artists, album designers, graphic designers, etc.
The first 2-hour session was Treasure Hunt at the National Gallery in central London. Participants used a specially-printed map and set of clues to find, look closely at, and draw, about ten paintings in the gallery’s collection. The second session involved creating stencils from motifs from Goya etchings which participants then used to maketheir own prints and multi-media creations. The final session included a short talk by Jish, a London-based artist whose work parallels in some ways that of Goya. Participants then used images from Goya and Jish’s paintings to make their own works exploring current political and social issues.
All the sessions were were very well attended and successful in reaching our target audience. Some one hundred 18-25 year-olds and feedback has been excellent. We plan to do more workshops of this kind across London and hopefully elsewhere in the future. If you would like to get involved or donate toward this initiative, please contact us via the form on this website.
Goya and Africa launches in Cape Town and London
Soft-launch of Goya and Africa, our first online exhibition
April 2024 saw the soft-launch of our new digital-first exhibition, Goya and Africa at Boschendal Art Gallery in South Africa’s Western Cape Province The exhibition is being co-produced and co-curated with Brundyn Arts and Culture, an arts and education consultancy based in Cape Town, with input from South African teachers and facilitators Clint Bowers (Institute for the Healing of Memories, Cape Town), Lynda Leibbrandt (IES International School of Helderberg), and Chuma Nozewu (Lalela, Cape Town, and South African Education and Environment Project). Some fifty 17- and 13-year students from a nearby school and an after-school arts programme run by Lalela, visited Boschendal with their teachers find out about the exhibition and give us feedback.
Goya & Africa is designed to introduce young people with little knowledge of art history or access to art galleries to the paintings and prints of the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya (1746, Fuentedetodos, Spain - 1828, Bordeaux), and to works by contemporary African artists including William Kentridge, Roméo Mivekannin, Grace Nyahangare, Johannes Phokela, Athi-Patra Ruga, Yinka Shonibare and Diane Victor. A small temporary display of these works and information about the online exhibition has been installed at Boschendal and will be visited by other school groups over the next few months.
Goya’s paintings and prints are some of the most powerful artworks ever produced about human responses to conflict, poverty and violence. The exhibition shows some of them in dialogue with those of contemporary Africans, bridging the visions of great artists working centuries, continents, and cultures apart. In four virtual galleries entitled “unsafe”, “broken promise”, “belief vs reason”, and “reimagining the future.” The exhibition showcases each artist’s singular imaginary at the same time as the many the points of contact between them all. Some contemporary works quote directly from Goya, but more often the display reveals similar responses to difficult histories and to the search for humour and optimism against a backdrop of anxiety and uncertainty.
The exhibition website also includes short films in which each artist speaks about their work, and Teachers’ Resources including timelines, artists bios, activity sheets and videos discussing the different print-making techniques employed in many of the works.
As is clear in the video above, the students’ and teachers’ responses to the content were overwhelmingly positive. Co-curator Lindsay Hendricks spent two hours with each group, introducing them to Goya and the contemporary African artists featured in the exhibition, and showing the students how to access the material on their mobile phones. For most of the young visitors, it was the first time they had seen works by most of the artists or visited an art gallery other than Boschendal. For many, it was also their first encounter with prints and print-making.
Athena and Brundyn Arts and Culture will roll the project out to schools around South Africa – and hopefully in other nations in Africa and around the world - over the next few months, collecting and responding to feedback via a brief survey on the website. The draft website will go live in early May and the plan is spend the rest of the year reviewing both the content and design on the basis of this feedback, launching the final digital-first exhibition to a wider public and press at Investec Cape Town Art Fair next year.