Publications

In her first solo exhibition at Michael Stevenson, Dineo Seshee Bopape shows the eclipse will not be visible to the naked eye, a large-scale installation incorporating videos, painting, sculpture and digital prints, and a video of the same title. The works are lavishly illustrated in this catalogue, accompanied by an essay by Gabi Ngcobo which maps Bopape's 'uncategorisable' practice through a selection of extracts from the artist's statements.

Published by Prestel, the Faces and Phases series of black and white portraits by Zanele Muholi focuses on the commemoration and celebration of black lesbians' lives. Muholi embarked on this project in 2006, taking portraits of women from the townships in South Africa. In 2008, after the xenophobic and homophobic attacks that led to the mass displacement of people in that country, she decided to expand the ongoing series to include photographs of women from different countries. Collectively, the portraits are an act of visual activism. Depicting women of various ages and backgrounds, this gallery of images offers a powerful statement about the similarities and diversity that exist within the human race.

Sabelo Mlangeni's Country Girls series provides an intimate portrait of gay life in the South African countryside. The black and white photographs were taken from 2003 to 2009 in small towns and rural areas in the Mpumalanga province - bleak environments where township life is rough and poor, but not without glamour. As the accompanying essay by Graeme Reid argues, Mlangeni's work shows that gays have carved spaces for themselves in the countryside, in seemingly unlikely places where they work, play, love and create community.

The FOREX series uses the foreign exchange market as a metaphor for an exchange of artistic ideas with a world beyond Africa. The catalogue documents a year of FOREX projects culminating in the exhibition This is Our Time, curated by Joost Bosland. In addition to Bosland's introductory notes, the catalogue features an essay by Thomas Hirschhorn, 'Doing art politically: What does this mean?', and diverse texts on the artists who include Jane Alexander, Marc Bijl, Meschac Gaba, Glenn Ligon, Zanele Muholi, Lucia Nimcova, Berni Searle, Penny Siopis and Akram Zaatari.

Bringing together recent drawings, paintings and prints by Anton Kannemeyer, Pappa in Afrika offers a confrontational and witty critique of European colonialism and its ongoing legacy in Africa. Kannemeyer juxtaposes factual and realistic images with outrageous comic imagery and provocative text. Parodying Hergé's Tintin in the Congo (1931), he delves into the underlying racism of the colonial project and the corruption that persists in Africa today. Kannemeyer also takes on the vigorous debates around race that enliven and shadow daily life in South Africa. In an accompanying essay, poet and journalist Danie Marais offers a compelling argument for art like Kannemeyer's that simultaneously provokes and entertains. Published by Jacana.

The first publication devoted to Steven Cohen since his Taxi book of 2003, Life is Shot, Art is Long takes a retrospective view of works spanning 22 years. These range from the early silkscreens, through such seminal performance pieces as Chandelier (20021/2), Maid in South Africa (2005), Dancing Inside Out (2006) and Golgotha (2009), to his installation of collaged Nazi identity documents, Inscribed in the Book of Life (2010). The richly illustrated catalogue includes an interview with Cohen by Ivor Powell and an essay (in French only) by critic Gérard Mayen on Golgotha.

For her solo exhibition with the gallery, Ângela Ferreira produced a new installation based on Roelof Uytenbogaardt's Werdmuller Centre in Cape Town. The catalogue documents Ferreira's 'investigative art', revealing her thought processes and inquiries into the building, which the artist posits as a prototype for the failure of modernism and its utopian ideals in Africa. Ferreira's working processes take the form of notes, drawings, photomontages and research photographs. These culminate in an installation featuring a large-scale interactive sculpture shown together with an archival photograph of the building that sparked the investigation.

Natasja Kensmil's suite of paintings of Queen Elizabeth I effectively serve as posthumous counterpoints to traditional state portraits, exposing the anguished inner life and tragedy of their subject. The catalogue includes a conversation between the artist and Michael Stevenson. Kensmil comments that her imagery of fear and of anxiousness is derived from history, religion and mythology but also from the extremism of our time; that the present is determined by factors that extend decades into the past.

This catalogue accompanies Lynette Yiadom-Boakye's first solo exhibition at Michael Stevenson, comprising seven large paintings on canvas, as well as the installation Pleased to Meet You, shown as part of the gallery's FOREX series in 2009. Critic Barry Schwabsky contributes an essy on Yiadom-Boakye's 'Imaginary Portraits'; also included is a short story written by the artist, 'Stage Directions for a Short Tragedy'.

Michael Stevenson's 14th annual summer exhibition focuses on 11 projects in diverse media, some by established artists, others less well-known or showing with the gallery for the first time. The artists are Jane Alexander, Dineo Bopape, Willem Boshoff, Tom Cullberg, Retha Erasmus, Sabelo Mlangeni, Zanele Muholi, Tracy Payne, Andrew Putter, Berni Searle and Guy Tillim. The catalogue documents the works and includes texts by and on the artists.

Sabelo Mlangeni's Men Only series focuses on the George Goch hostel on the East Rand of Johannesburg. Mlangeni spent several weeks in the hostel, sharing the daily routines of the tenants as he worked. Some of the photographs allude to harsh living conditions; others that capture daily chores such as cooking and ironing are quiet, tender. Some photographs show only details of arms, hands, feet: they give clues to relationships and dynamics among the residents, but do not explain them. Mlangeni found the lives that are revealed through his lens to be 'as complex as I imagined and at times as familiar as my own skin'.

The catalogue accompanying Meschac Gaba's second solo exhibition at Michael Stevenson features two bodies of work. Colours of Cotonou, a installation of picture frames covered in cut-outs from Beninese bank notes and found objects, is inspired by Benin's culture of street trading. And a new series of Tresses constructed from artificial braided hair takes the shape of cars. Ivor Powell's essay discusses how Gaba's work occupies a zone of ambivalence, embracing the 'existential diaspora' of contradiction.

This catalogue documents Simon Gush's first major solo exhibition, Sidestep. Here he examines the manner in which both high culture and personal political identities are formed by cultural traditions and structures. This relationship, according to Gush, has to be constantly renegotiated and reformed. The accompanying text by Joost Bosland considers Gush's formalism.

This catalogue accompanies Paul Edmunds' first solo exhibition at the gallery. Here Edmunds continues the investigation of pattern, form, symmetry and unconventional materials for which he is known, but offers the viewer a new window onto aspects of his work. His short story Subtropicalia, included as an insert to the catalogue, recounts the artist's childhood in Johannesburg in the 1970s and 80s and his enduring interest in skateboarding and surfing - interests that can be seen to inform Edmunds' explorations in the works on show.

Catalogue no 43, October 2009 | Softcover, 24 pages + 12-page insert | Price: R100
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Nollywood is the third largest film industry in the world, releasing between 500 and 1 000 movies each year. Stars are local actors; plots confront the public with familiar situations of romance, comedy, witchcraft, bribery, prostitution. The narrative is overdramatic, deprived of happy endings, tragic. The aesthetic is loud, violent, excessive. Pieter Hugo's images are staged representations of Nigerian film sets, featuring local actors who recreate the stereotypical myths and symbols that characterise Nollywood productions. Accompanying texts are by Chris Abani, Stacy Hardy and Zina Saro-Wiwa.

2009 | Hardcover, 120 pages | ISBN 978-3-7913-4312-9 | Price: R650
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Nicholas Hlobo's first monograph, published on the occasion of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award, traces his work from 2005 to 2009, including the making of his SBYA exhibition. Accompanying essays by Mark Gevisser, Kopano Ratele and Jen Mergel looks at aspects of Hlobo's life and work in depth. Hlobo draws strongly on his Xhosa heritage in his work, invoking the rich idioms of the Xhosa language and exploring how traditions evolve in changing times. Of equal interest to the artist is his sexual identity, and his place as a gay man within Xhosa culture. In his SBYA exhibition, Umtshotsho, Hlobo takes as his theme the rituals that accompany the transition from youth to adulthood.

2009 | Softcover, 108 pages | ISBN 978-0-620-44135-3 | Price: R200
Special edition (300), semi-hard cover with leatherette spine | Price: R500
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Penny Siopis' new large-scale canvases draw on diverse sources for their imagery - newspapers and books, other art, direct experiences; these images are 'violent, erotic, tragic and beautiful; atavistic and elemental as well as social and analytical'. But the works are as much about materiality, chance and process, and the productive tensions between form and reference, and form and materiality, as Siopis describes in an accompanying conversation with Sarah Nuttall.

Catalogue no 42, May 2009 | Softcover, 52 pages | Price: R100
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This catalogue accompanies Nandipha Mntambo's second solo exhibition at Michael Stevenson, The Encounter, featuring sculptural works including Nandikeshvara, Emabutfo and uMcedo, the bronze bust Zeus, the bullfighting video Ukungenisa and photographic works. The catalogue also documents major pieces made subsequent to Mntambo's previous exhibition, Ingabisa (2007). The catalogue includes an essay by television producer Mfundi Vundla.

Catalogue no 41, April 2009 | Softcover, 48 pages | Price: R100
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This monograph is co-published by Michael Stevenson and the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), which hosted Deborah Poynton's first museum exhibitions in the United States in its galleries in Savannah and Atlanta early in 2009. The publication features extensive reproductions of Poynton's paintings dating from 1998 through to 2008, along with essays by photographer David Goldblatt and SCAD curator Erin Dziedzic, and an interview with Poynton by Michael Stevenson.

2009 | Semi-hardcover, 108 pages | ISBN 978-0-9797440-9-9 | Price: R295
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Conrad Botes' Cain and Abel is a reflection on the origins of violence, a return to the very first tale of murder as related in the Bible and Qu'ran. A gritty black and white comic first published in Bitterkomix is reworked as a series of 15 reverse-glass painted panels. In Crime and Punishment, horned male figures, their bodies inscribed with symbols, are seen to worship a lofty female figure. A series of generic portraits of men is titled Hostile Territory. There is a pervasive atmosphere of violence, horror, grit, a feeling the artist describes as 'like shrapnel under the skin'. The catalogue includes powerful new writing by Stacy Hardy which takes the works as its springboard.

Catalogue no 40, January 2009 | Softcover, 36 pages | Price: R80
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Michael Stevenson's annual summer exhibition takes on a fresh format and focuses on 10 projects, some by well-known gallery artists - Nicholas Hlobo, Deborah Poynton, Nandipha Mntambo, Zanele Muholi, Youssef Nabil, Odili Donald Odita and David Goldblatt - and others by artists showing with the gallery for the first time: Paul Edmunds, Andrew Putter and Daniel Naudé. The catalogue documents the works and includes interviews, essays and stories by and on the artists.

Published by Prestel in association with the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, Avenue Patrice Lumumba comprises Guy Tillim's photographs taken in Mozambique, DR Congo, Madagascar, Angola and Benin in 2007/8, beautifully reproduced, each photograph occupying a double-page spread. Introductory texts are by Robert Gardner and Guy Tillim, and appear in French and Portuguese as well as English. Tillim, the recipient of the first Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography, writes: 'These photographs are not collapsed histories of post-colonial African states or a meditation on aspects of late-modernist-era colonial structures, but a walk through avenues of dreams ...'

2008 | Hardcover, 128 pages | ISBN 978-3-7913-4066-1 | Price: R865
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In this self-published monograph, Paul Edmunds presents a selection of work from 1995 to 2007 that he feels 'best represents [his] dominant concerns and the evolution [his] work has undergone in this time'. The publication includes short essays by Brendon Bussy and Nic Dawes, as well as extended commentary on individual works, written by the artist.

2008 | Softcover, 48 pages | ISBN 978-0-40458-7 | Price: R150
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This book was published by Fundação Serralves and Civilização Editora to accompany Goldblatt's exhibition at the Museu Serralves in Portugal. For this exhibition, Goldblatt revised and extended his pairings of photographs first shown on Intersections Intersected at Michael Stevenson in January/February 2008 (Click here to view). As before, photographs from essays undertaken in the years of apartheid have been paired with photographs from Goldblatt's post-apartheid work.

Published on the occasion of Odili Donald Odita's first solo exhibition at Michael Stevenson, Double Edge comprises a suite of paintings and site-specific wall-paintings that move beyond sentimental notions associated with the painting medium. The catalogue features an interview with Odita by Joost Bosland, highlighting Odita's concerns of form and culture.

In Fear of a Black Planet - the title quoting the 1990 album by the American rap/hip-hop group Public Enemy - Kannemeyer continues his investigation of the fear and anxiety that underlie South Africa's fragile democracy and the legacy of colonialism on the African continent. He has recently extended his practice to include paintings in acrylic on canvas. The shift in medium allows him to translate his subversive imagery onto a larger scale, heightening the awkward relationship viewers often have with his work. Kannemeyer also exhibited large-scale drawings for the first time, in addition to smaller drawings and prints. The catalogue features an interview with Kannemeyer by Danie Marais.

Catalogue no 37, October 2008 | Softcover, 48 pages | Out of print/unavailable
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Berni Searle: Recent Work 2007/8 is published following Searle's fourth solo exhibition at Michael Stevenson, which included four new video pieces: Alibama, Mute, Seeking Refuge and Day for Night, and related prints. The catalogue also extends beyond the exhibition, bringing together three works - Bathe, Spirit of '76 and Once Removed - completed since Searle's previous book, Approach (2006). It includes texts by Marion Arnold, Gabeba Baderoon, Annie E Coombes, Tamar Garb, Gavin Jantjes, Tracey Murnik and Elvira Dyangani Ose.

Catalogue no 36, October 2008 | Softcover, 72 pages | Price: R120
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Published by Hatje Cantz, Youssef Nabil: I won't let you die is the first comprehensive presentation of the Egyptian artist's hand-coloured photographs of celebrities, friends, self-portraits and staged images taken over the past 15 years. The lavishly illustrated book also features conversations between Nabil and Ghada Amer, Shirin Neshat and Faten Hamama and an essay by Octavio Zaya.

2008 | Hardcover, 288 pages | ISBN 978-3-7757-2306-0 | Price: R570
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Curated by Joost Bosland, Disguise explores threads of pageantry, trauma, drag, political pretence, fashion and stealth in the work of Yto Barrada, Zander Blom, Dineo Bopape, Wim Botha, Candice Breitz, Nick Cave, Steven Cohen, Rotimi Fani-Kayodé, Dumile Feni, David Goldblatt, Simon Gush, Pieter Hugo, Lunga Kama, Natasja Kensmil, Kalup Linzy, Julie Mehretu, Nandipha Mntambo, Zanele Muholi, Youssef Nabil, JD 'Okhai Ojeikere, Athi-Patra Ruga, Claudette Schreuders, Berni Searle, Yinka Shonibare and Penny Siopis. Images of the works are accompanied by texts on each artist by Bosland, the artists and other writers.

Catalogue no 35, May 2008 | Softcover, 144 pages | Price: R200 | Out of print/unavailable
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Nicholas Hlobo's second solo exhibition at Michael Stevenson, Kwatsityw'iziko ('crossing the hearth') comprises large-scale installations, sculptural pieces and works on paper. Hlobo brings new clarity to his explorations of his favourite themes - chief among them sex, and specifically gay sex, subjected to the interpretations and innuendo of Xhosa metaphor. He also brings a new scale to his engagement with his signature materials, which include rubber inner tubing, silicone, thread and ribbons, applied to found, modified props. In addition to images of all the works, the catalogue features an interview with Hlobo by Joost Bosland.

Catalogue no 34, April 2008 | Softcover, 36 pages | Out of print/unavailable
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Published to accompany an exhibition presented by Michael Stevenson, Michael Graham-Stewart and Johans Borman, 'Take your road and travel along' pairs South African artists including Gerard Sekoto, George Pemba and Ernest Mancoba with their contemporaries from other parts of Africa, such as Ben Enwonwu from Nigeria and Sam Ntiro from Tanzania. It also includes the work of the next generation - artists associated with the Zaria Art Society and Oshogbo workshops in Nigeria, the Polly Street Art Centre in Johannesburg, Frank McEwen's workshops at the National Gallery in Harare and the initiatives of Pancho Guedes in Maputo. The essay and commentary on the works are by Michael Stevenson and Jost Bosland.

2008 | Hardcover, 144 pages | ISBN 978-0-620-40582-9 | Price: R250 | Out of print/unavailable)
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Published by Prestel, this is Pieter Hugo's third monograph following Looking Aside (2006) and Messina/Musina (2007). Many myths surround the Hyena Men who haunt the peripheries of Nigeria's cities. Accompanied by hyenas, rock pythons and baboons, these men earn a living by performing before crowds and selling traditional medicines. Hugo's extraordinary portraits of their liminal existence reveal an uncanny world of complex, codependent relationships, where familiar distinctions between dominance and submission, wildness and domesticity, tradition and modernity are constantly subverted.

2007 | Hardcover, 80 pages | ISBN 978-3-7913-3960-3 | R500
South African sales only; available internationally through good bookstores
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The side gallery project at Michael Stevenson hosted four exhibitions by young artists from June to November 2007 - She is Dancing for the Rain with her Hand in the Toaster by Athi-Patra Ruga, Unravelled and Rewoven Canvas by Fabian Saptouw, Aboleleng & Hema by Lerato Shadi and Salute by Simon Gush. These exhibitions are documented here accompanied by an introductory text by curator Joost Bosland. Click on the artists' names to view exhibitions.

Catalogue no 33, December 2007 | Softcover, 24 pages | Price: R50

Michael Stevenson's annual summer season catalogue showcases new and recent works by the gallery's artists, including paintings by Deborah Poynton, Mustafa Maluka, Odili Donald Odita, Anton Kannemeyer and Tracy Payne; sculptural and mixed media pieces by Wim Botha, Conrad Botes, Doreen Southwood, Nicholas Hlobo and Nandipha Mntambo; photography by David Goldblatt, Youssef Nabil, Pieter Hugo, Guy Tillim, Zanele Muholi and Athi-Patra Ruga; a video by Berni Searle, a print by Claudette Schreuders and ceramics by Hylton Nel. Accompanying texts are by Michael Stevenson, Sophie Perryer and Joost Bosland.

Catalogue no 32, November 2007 | Softcover, 84 pages | Out of print/unavailable
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Jointly published by Michael Stevenson and the Johannesburg Art Gallery to accompany exhibitions at both these venues, the catalogue features an essay by JAG curator Khwezi Gule and an interview with Gaba by Joost Bosland, highlighting the importance of humour and play in Gaba's work. The South African Tresses - iconic buildings translated into braided wigs made from artificial hair - are reproduced along with images of recent works at venues including Tate Modern, SMAK Ghent, and the 2006 Sydney Biennale.

2007 | Semi-hardcover, 72 pages | ISBN 978-0-620-39822-0 | Price: R195
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Willem Boshoff's work since the late 1970s has explored the interplay of art and language in the forms of concrete poetry, dictionaries, sculptures and installations. This catalogue accompanies Boshoff's exhibition in which he substantially extends two seminal bodies of work, Blind Alphabet and KykAfrikaans; comments on politics and culpability in characteristically playful yet pointed manner; and reflects on the vital role that trees and wood play in his work. The catalogue contains extensive texts on the works, written by the artist.

Catalogue no 31, October 2007 | Softcover, 60 pages | Price: R100
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In her catalogue introduction, Siopis writes: 'Lasso speaks of the "poetics of vulnerability". Ideas work more by association than direct narration. In this, the medium is as important as image or narrative.' More than 30 of Siopis' paintings - in oil, ink and viscous glue - are reproduced in this catalogue, which accompanied her first solo show in Cape Town since 1984.

Catalogue no 30, October 2007 | Softcover, 36 pages | Price: R70
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Published on the occasion of Nandipha Mntambo's first solo exhibition, Ingabisa, this catalogue brings together her works to date, including pieces produced for her BAFA and Master's degree shows. Mntambo has developed a distinctive aesthetic through her use of cowhide, which she tans and moulds onto casts of the female body. The hairy skin is used to 'challenge and subvert preconceptions regarding representation of the female body', and to 'disrupt perceptions of attraction and repulsion'. Images of the works are accompanied by an essay by Bettina Malcomess.

Catalogue no 29, August 2007 | Softcover, 32 pages | Price: R70
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This catalogue accompanies Tracy Payne's third exhibition at the gallery. In Payne's early work she expressed the domination of yang over yin, and subsequent bodies of work have been concerned with bringing these energies into balance. Following her exhibition Sacred Yin (2005), Payne's mind turned to the notion of sacred yang after encountering the actions of China's Shaolin monks. Her portraits, in oils, Chinese and Japanese ink and watercolours, mostly exist in the space of meditation just prior to action, while others explore a range of emotions from inward serenity through to an outward expression of power.

Catalogue no 28, July 2007 | Softcover, 36 pages | Price: R70
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Pieter Hugo is the Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art 2007, and this book accompanies his award exhibition touring South Africa during 2007/8. Published by Punctum Press in association with Michael Stevenson and Standard Bank/National Arts Festival, the large-format book features Hugo's photographs of South Africa's northernmost town on the border with Zimbabwe - both portraits of its inhabitants and details of its landscape. In addition the book includes a short story by Stacy Hardy titled 'The Donkey Fuckers', and a conversation between Hugo and writer/photo-editor Joanna Lehan.

2007 | Hardcover, 120 pages | ISBN 978-88-95410-03-6 | Price: R400
Softcover | Price: R295
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In this first monograph on his work, Youssef Nabil photographs young men in intimate situations, asleep or on the threshold of sleep, interspersed with self-portraits, and sets up dreamlike moments that are imbued with a brooding sexuality. Published by Michael Stevenson and ABP Autograph, the book explores the interior and exterior worlds of drama, beauty, glamour, sexuality and identity.

2007 | Hardcover, 88 pages | ISBN 978-0-620-38754-5 | Price: R250
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This catalogue accompanies Conrad Botes' first solo exhibition at Michael Stevenson. Botes' imagination is embedded with the evils of apartheid, its obsession with power and repression, the violence and anarchy of the times and the moralising role of the Dutch Reformed Church. His latest work is less overtly concerned with politics however, opening itself up to wider concerns. A sense of masculine identity in crisis runs throughout the show, as does Botes' distinctive comic aesthetic and dark humour.

Catalogue no 27, May 2007 | Softcover, 48 pages | Price: R70
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Curated by Sophie Perryer, who also edited the catalogue, Afterlife brings together works by 10 artists exploring 'the nebulous zones where the material and spiritual realms intersect, and where the past and future converge, revealing themselves in the present moment'. Participating artists are Wim Botha, Ângela Ferreira, Moshekwa Langa, Nandipha Mntambo, Samson Mudzunga, Claudette Schreuders, Penny Siopis, Minnette Vári, James Webb and French/Algerian guest artist Zineb Sedira.

Catalogue no 26, March 2007 | Softcover, 60 pages | Price: R100
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The Interview (a transcript) is Maluka's second exhibition at Michael Stevenson following Accented Living: a rough guide in 2005. It comprises a series of his signature paintings, head-and-shoulders portraits that draw stylistically on the history of painting and mark-making with a street culture edge. The catalogue documents the 19 works on exhibition plus others shown over the past year in São Paulo and Copenhagen.

Catalogue no 25, February 2007 | Softcover, 36 pages | Price: R70
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This catalogue accompanies Botha's third solo exhibition at Michael Stevenson. The title is a neologism formed by combining 'apocalypse' and 'agnosia', and implies our inability to truly possess knowledge about the world even as it reveals itself to us. In addition to installation views of the works, the catalogue includes text, written by Botha in Afrikaans, which is rendered illegible, its meaning obscured as the letters are mirrored and distorted to form images within the body of the text.

Catalogue no 24, January 2007 | Softcover, 28 pages | Price: R50
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In this series of photographs Pieter Hugo looks directly at people whose appearance makes us look aside. In doing so, he forces us to confront ourselves and our preconceptions and prejudices, and question why we are so awkward when we encounter people who are unusual in some way. This beautifully presented book is published by Punctum and contains an essay by Antjie Krog.

2006 | Hardcover, 86 pages | ISBN 978-88-89412-20-8 | Price: R450
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This large format book was jointly published by Renate Wiehager, Michael Stevenson and Galleria Extraspazio (Rome) with the support of DaimlerChrysler AG. Guy Tillim took this series of images in July 2006 during the weeks of the Democratic Republic of Congo's first general election held since successive conflicts in the late 90s killed 3.5 million people. The images mirror the political wasteland and civic disorder that resulted from the rivalry between presidential candidates Etinenne Tshisikedi and President Josef Kabila.

2006 | Softcover, 36 pages | ISBN 0-620-37642-2 | Price: R150
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In 2006, the Hasselblad Foundation selected David Goldblatt as the recipient of the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography. Previous winners include Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Iring Penn, Josef Koudelka, Robert Frank, Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall. This handsome book was published to coincide with the opening of an exhibition of his work at the Hasselblad Center in Göteborg and the presentation of his prize. Only previously unpublished colour images were chosen for inclusion in this book, among them triptychs from his most recent body of work.

2006 | Hardcover, 84 pages | ISBN 978-3-7757-1917-9 | Price: R395

The much awaited Some Afrikaners Revisited is published by Umuzi to coincide with David Goldblatt's exhibition of the same name. Between 1961 and 1968, Goldblatt photographed Afrikaners initially around small-holdings near Randfontein, next in the Marico Bushveld and then more generally. Some of the black and white photographs were reproduced in specialist magazines, but it took Goldblatt until 1975 to find a publisher for the book that he envisaged - today a much-sought-after collector's item. This new book contains all but one of the photographs reproduced in the 1975 publication (some that were previously cropped are now shown in their entirety), as well as 20 additional photographs taken at the same time.

2006 | Softcover, 240 pages | ISBN 978-1-4152-0025-4 | Price: R395
Limited edition (300), hardcover | ISBN 978-1-4152-0026-1 | Price: R850
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For the first time in 11 years, Michael Stevenson's annual exhibition and catalogue of South African art focus exclusively on the work of contemporary artists, in recognition of the increasingly high profile of the gallery's artists. Among the works included are a huge shark-shaped drum by Samson Mudzunga, new mixed media works by Nicholas Hlobo, recent sculptures by Wim Botha, a large-scale wall painting by Conrad Botes, and Anton Kannemeyer's Alphabet of Democracy. Photographic works include previously unseen photographs of the Congo's Mai Mai militia by Guy Tillim; Pieter Hugo's portraits of boy scouts in Monrovia, Liberia; recent colour South African landscapes by David Goldblatt and new portraits by Zanele Muholi. Mustafa Maluka, Deborah Poynton and Tracy Payne all show new paintings.

Catalogue no 23, November 2006 | Softcover, 72 pages | Price: R100
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Over the last 10 years or so, Bitterkomix has been (as one critic remarks) "consistently challenging and outrageous, undeniably brilliant, and impossible to ignore". The Big Bad Bitterkomix Handbook brings together the full range of Kannemeyer and Botes' work from the early 1990s until now, including published covers, postcards, posters and drawings from personal sketchbooks. Interspersed with these images are essays by, among others, Antjie Krog, Andy Mason, Ryk Hattingh and Gregory Kerr. The book, published by Jacana and designed by Garth Walker of Orange Juice Design, is an essential chronicle and visual cornucopia of the work of the Bitterkomix artists.

2006 | Softcover, 218 pages | ISBN 978-1-77009-303-4 | Price: R330
Hardcover | Price: R395
Click here to view launch exhibition.

This monograph is published jointly by Michael Stevenson, the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum and Johannesburg Art Gallery, and accompanies exhibitions at the three galleries during 2006/7. The beautifully designed book includes essays by Gabeba Baderoon, Clive Kellner and Laurie Ann Farrell and numerous images of Searle's work from the Colour Me series (1998) through to her latest body of work, Night Fall (2006).

2006 | Hardcover, 112 pages | ISBN 0-620371-45-5 | Price: R295 | Out of print/unavailable
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This catalogue documents Nicholas Hlobo's first solo exhibition, Izele. Hlobo has built up a distinctive body of work that engages the viewer in conversations about sexual identity, masculinity and ethnicity. To these ends he harnesses the associative potential of materials such as rubber inner tubes, ribbon, soap, silicon and found objects, and makes use of his own body in performance. Photographs of the exhibition are accompanied by texts on the work by Hlobo, from an interview with Sophie Perryer.

Catalogue no 22, August 2006 | Softcover, 48 pages | Out of print/unavailable
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In this series of colour photographs Guy Tillim looks intimately at the daily life of the residents of a village in central Malawi. On two occasions he stayed for a week in the village and quietly observed the conversations and routines of the day. His lyrical images of the residents and the textures of the village linger with their stillness and reserve. The concertina-style book is published by Punctum Press.

2006 | Hardcover | ISBN 8889412259 | Price: R1 000
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Churchill Madikida won the Standard Bank Young Artist award for Visual Art 2006, and this catalogue is a record of his artistic production leading up to that achievement. Essays by Steve Kwena Makoena and Colin Richards are illustrated with many full-colour photographs of both entire installations and details of his work. Edited by Sophie Perryer, this 84-page monograph is a tribute to the richness of Madikida's art.

2006 | Semi-hardcover, 84 pages | ISBN 0-620-36717-2 | Price: R150
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This catalogue accompanies Distant Relatives / Relative Distance, a curated exhibition of work by six contemporary artists from elsewhere in Africa, all currently living overseas. The exhibition features installations created for the gallery space by visiting artists Barthélémy Toguo (Cameroon/ France) and Senam Okudzeto (Ghana/UK), as well as paintings by Odili Donald Odita (Nigeria/USA) and Owusu-Ankomah (Ghana/Germany), prints by Julie Mehretu (Ethiopia/USA) and a video projection by Wangechi Mutu (Kenya/USA).

Catalogue no 21, June 2006 | Softcover, 60 pages | Price: R80
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Published by Michael Stevenson and STE, with support from the French Institute (IFAS), to coincide with Zanele Muholi's exhibition at Michael Stevenson, this book features more than 50 photographs dating from 2002 to 2006. A prominent activist, Muholi confronts the notion that lesbian practices are alien to African cultures, and offers a radical break from stereotypical narratives about black female sexualities. The book features an essay by academic Pumla Dineo Gqola, and reprints of newspaper articles in response to Muholi's groundbreaking work.

2006 | Semi-hardcover, 96 pages | ISBN 0-620361-46-8 | Price: R250/unavailable
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In early 2006, Samson Mudzunga held a solo exhibition at the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, and staged performances in New York and at the opening of the group exhibition Personal Affects at The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu. This catalogue showcases his large-scale drums produced in 2004-2006, and features an essay by Michael Stevenson which discusses the central theme of transgression in his performances and sculptural works.

Catalogue no 20, February 2006 | Softcover, 24 pages | Price: R50
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This catalogue accompanied Deborah Poynton's exhibition at Michael Stevenson in January 2006, comprising four large-scale paintings (each 2m x 6m): Betrayal, For Ever and Ever, Safety and Security and Surrender. Poynton explore the disjunctions between our inner worlds and outer realities, and the vulnerability and loneliness of everyday life, and the isolation of the individual in our noisy and crowded contemporary world, are immediately apparent in these works. The catalogue features an essay by Peter Rech, an art therapist and professor of art education at the University of Cologne, Germany.

Catalogue no 19, January 2006 | Softcover, 34 pages | Out of print/unavailable
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Michael Stevenson's annual season exhibition and catalogue features a selection of choice works by South African 20th-century masters - Irma Stern, Gregoire Boonzaier, Gerard Sekoto, Albert Adams, Ezrom Legae, Sydney Kumalo, Ephraim Ngatane, Walter Battiss, Stanley Pinker and Peter Clarke - as well as a selection of major new works by the gallery's contemporary artists including Guy Tillim, Pieter Hugo, David Goldblatt, Zanele Muholi, Mustafa Maluka, Deborah Poynton, Tracy Payne, Hylton Nel, Churchill Madikida, Nicholas Hlobo and Wim Botha.

Catalogue no 18, December 2005 | Softcover, 96 pages | Price: R100
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Accompanying her exhibition at Michael Stevenson in September 2005, Tracy Payne's Sacred Yin catalogue features reproductions and details of five large-scale hexagonal canvases and five smaller circular canvases, each exquisitely painted in oils using a combination of photographic realism and abstract washes of colour. The works takes their inspiration from sacred geometry, morphing flowers and the female form to resemble mandalas. The catalogue also features source material and a statement by the artist.

Catalogue no 17, September 2005 | Softcover, 32 pages | Out of print/unavailable
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This catalogue accompanies a curated exhibition featuring 11 South African artists - Alan Alborough, Dineo Bopape, Paul Edmunds, Retha Erasmus, Nicholas Hlobo, Nandipha Mntambo, Walter Oltmann, Stefanus Rademeyer, Doreen Southwood, Jeremy Wafer and Sandile Zulu - and guest artist El Anatsui (Ghana/Nigeria). They share a deep concern with materials and materiality, as well as a tendency towards obsessive working processes. The catalogue is lavishly illustrated with installation views and details of all the works, and includes statements by the artists on their working processes.

Catalogue no 16, August 2005 | Softcover, 58 pages | Out of print/unavailable
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In the Jo'burg series Guy Tillim considers the private lives of the residents of inner-city Johannesburg, the often-forgotten subjects of the decay and renewal of a city undergoing radical transformation. The series, produced with the support of Tillim's DaimlerChrysler award for South African Photography in 2004, went on to win him the Leica Oskar Barnack Award for photojournalism in July 2005. With its concertina binding, the book - published by Filigranes Editions and STE - is a beautiful art object in its own right.

2005 | Hardcover | ISBN 2-35046-014-2 | Price: R1 000
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Published by Prestel to coincide with Goldblatt's solo exhibition of the same title at the museum kunst palast in Düsseldorf, this substantial publication features 92 colour photographs, an interview by Mark Haworth-Booth and essays by Christoph Danelzik-Brüggemann and Michael Stevenson. 'Intersections' is the term Goldblatt has come to use for the cross-currents of "ideas, values, ethics, postures, people and things" that he has probed for more than 50 years. This is the first extensive publication of his personal colour work and of his explorations of post-apartheid South Africa.

2005 | Hardcover, 124 pages | ISBN 3-7913-3247-3 | Out of print | Price: R1 000
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Wim Botha won the Standard Bank Young Artist award for Visual Art 2005, and this wonderfully produced catalogue documents the eight years of work leading up to that achievement. An essay by Liese van der Watt and an interview with the artist by Michael Stevenson are illustrated with many full-colour photographs of both entire installations and details of his work. Edited by Sophie Perryer, these 72 pages form the most significant record of Botha's art to date. The book is also available in a limited edition of 120 signed and numbered copies with gold page edging and hardcover slipcase.

2005 | Hardcover, 72 pages | ISBN 0-620-34440-7 | Price: R130
Limited edition with slipcase (120) | Price: R300
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This catalogue features twenty-three full-colour reproductions of Maluka's paintings, as well as images of his digital works, studio shots, and an interview with the artist by Sophie Perryer. The title of the exhibition and catalogue, Accented Living (a rough guide), situates Maluka's work in today's globalised world, which is characterised by large-scale displacement and relocation. Maluka is drawing on the notion of 'accented cultures', accents being distinctive modes of expression that convey the characteristics of different regions and classes, and are only noticed once the speaker leaves his or her home territory.

Catalogue no 15, June 2005 | Softcover, 35 pages | Out of print/unavailable
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The moment in which one is "about to forget" is also the moment in which one remembers. As the title of Berni Searle's exhibition and this accompanying volume suggest, this work looks at the intermediate space of memory where a sense of return and a sense of loss are simultaneously invoked. The process of forgetting entwines both the presence and absence of memory, and, in between, a series of gradually fading after-images of people and events that linger in the mind. This catalogue illustrates the exhibition, provides photographs of the process of making the work and images of source material.

Catalogue no 14, May 2005 | Softcover, 36 pages | Out of print/unavailable
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This catalogue accompanies and fully illustrates Wim Botha's solo exhibition of the same title at Michael Stevenson in March/April 2005. Key works include Leda and the swan, a suspended sculpture made out of bone meal and resin; Tremor, an installation comprising a fragmented simulated pressed lead ceiling, stained glass nuclear mushroom clouds, a vanitas painting and other elements; and Premonition of war I-III, comprising bronzes and a burnt wood sculpture installed in relation to framed photographs of clouds made up of puzzle pieces. The catalogue includes a section of source material, including word diagrams and art historical references.

Catalogue no 13, March 2005 | Softcover, 34 pages | Out of print/unavailable
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The latest African art catalogue from Michael Stevenson and Michael Graham-Stewart contains a pioneering essay on the acquisition of objects by European soldiers, missionaries and travelers, and the dramatic shift in the social significance of the object that occurs along with the shift in ownership. Pieces include a previously unpublished North Nguni cow-horn engraved with scenes of the Anglo-Zulu War, and an unusual Tsonga headrest with an attached staff.

Catalogue no 12, January 2005 | Softcover, 132 pages | Price: R100
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The seasonal catalogue accompanying an exhibition of South African paintings and sculptures at Michael Stevenson from 19 January to 5 February 2005. Highlights include a previously unpublished Namaqualand landscape by Hugo Naudé, a 1932 painting of harvesters by Maggie Laubser, a large and important Johannes Meintjes portrait, six bronzes by Sydney Kumalo, and works from the 1950s and 60s by Dorothy Kay, Simon Lekgetho, Robert Hodgins, Gerard Sekoto and Douglas Portway. New contemporary works are by established and emerging artists including Hylton Nel, David Goldblatt, Guy Tillim, Jeremy Wafer, Willem Boshoff, Berni Searle, Churchill Madikida, Mustafa Maluka, Sandile Zulu, Wim Botha and others.

Catalogue no 11, January 2005 | Softcover, 84 pages | Price: R60
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In December 2004 veteran artist Peter Clarke exhibited a body of 100 collages, produced over a number of years, at Michael Stevenson. Each fan-shaped collage is accompanied by beautifully written text either quoted or written by Clarke to describe the thoughts of a character who has influenced his life in some way, whether historical, literary, biblical, imaginary or real. In this book published to coincide with the exhibition, each work is reproduced full-page and full-colour. The plates are preceded by an interview conducted by Michael Stevenson in which Clarke talks about his life and work.

2004 | Hardcover, 112 pages | ISBN 0-620-33210-7 | Price: R350
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Accompanying an exhibition of works from the artist's own collection, this monograph is based on extensive discussions which Michael Stevenson conducted with Stanley Pinker on the occasion of his 80th birthday. In an introductory interview and in his incisive commentaries on his works, Pinker describes the complex iconography of his work and articlates his influences from diverse sources in art, literature and life. More than 80 works spanning the years 1950 to 2000 are illustrated in full colour.

2004 | Hardcover, 112 pages | ISBN 0-620-33209-3 | Price: R350
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Guy Tillim spent July to September 2003 photographing traces of the colonial occupation of the Congo by King Leopold II of Belgium and vestiges of more recent plunder under Mobutu Sese Seko. This series of images was exhibited at Michael Stevenson in May 2004, and in book form is accompanied by an essay by Adam Hochschild, the author of the highly acclaimed King Leopold's ghost. Tillim's images, frequently composed in diptychs and triptychs, juxtapose historical sites in the Congo and Belgium with contemporary views of the DRC. Hochschild writes: 'Rare is the photographer whose work so well captures not only the country before his camera's lens, but also the country of a hundred or more years ago.' Published by Filigranes Éditions.

2004 | Softcover, 112 pages | ISBN 2-914381-91-3 | Not available
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This catalogue in two volumes accompanied the South African group exhibition of the same title, which took place at the Museum for African Art and the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York in September 2004. The exhibition featured recent and newly commissioned works by 17 artists: Jane Alexander, Wim Botha, Steven Cohen, Churchill Madikida, Mustafa Maluka, Thando Mama, Samson Mudzunga, Jay Pather, Johannes Phokela, Robin Rhode, Claudette Schreuders, Berni Searle, Doreen Southwood, Clive van den Berg, Minnette Vári, Diane Victor and Sandile Zulu. The first volume features images of works in process, accompanied by essays by Okwui Enwezor and Liese van der Watt and interviews with each of the artists by Tracy Murinik. The second volume features installation photographs and an essay by Steven Nelson.

2004 | Two volumes, softcover, 176 & 96 pages | ISBN 0-945802-42-0 / 44-7 | Price: R325

Kevin Brand's catalogue illustrates his installation titled eleven a side, inspired by the popular game of table-soccer with its 22 figures that swivel on rotating bars. The appearance of Brand's sculptures recalls the mass-produced forms of the table-soccer figures, and also relates stylistically to the West African figurative tradition. This is the third body of work in which Brand has used a group of male figures as a sculptural device.

Catalogue no 10, September 2004 | Softcover, 12 pages | Price: R30
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Winner of the DaimlerChrysler Award for Contemporary South African Photography 2004, Guy Tillim's photojournalism is widely published. The exhibition curated for the DaimlerChrysler Award is a representative body of work made up of three separate portfolios. Departure, Kunhinga and Soldiers. This catalogue gives a comprehensive overview of Tillim's work from the early 1990s through to the present day.

Out of print/not available
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This catalogue covers a wide range of works produced in South Africa over the past two centuries. The works include a watercolour by Thomas Baines, an 1881 Melton Prior drawing depicting a battlefield during the Transvaal War and late 19th-century African art including a tripod vessel with lid, fertility figure and brass neck ring. Works by 20th-century masters including Irma Stern, Alexis Preller, Douglas Portway, Cecil Skotnes and Ephraim Ngatane, as well as a bronze of a Skapu player by Anton van Wouw, are fully illustrated with researched commentary. The contemporary artists who have new works in the catalogue include, among others, David Goldblatt, Pieter Hugo, Jane Alexander, Guy Tillim, Wim Botha, Deborah Poynton and Berni Searle.

Catalogue no 9, August 2004 | Softcover, 72 pages | Price: R60
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Deborah Poynton's paintings have been acclaimed for their alluring imagery and accomplished technique. Although her work is rich in references to the tradition of realist painting, it is also explicitly contemporary. In these six large-scale works she employs visual metaphors to create various levels of meaning. A beach scene or family group, a market or gentle-seeming interior, all rich with classical references and often using particularly South African imagery, contain subtexts that reflect contradictions between the human condition and societal expectations; between inner and outer realities.

Catalogue no 8, July 2004 | Softcover, 22 pages | Out of print/unavailable
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The title of this exhibition, Uniformed, reflects John Murray's interest in the contradictions between public and private in daily South African life. The uniforms that surround us in the workplace, on the sports fields, in our homes and in the street signal conformity. They suggest stereotypes, and immediately evoke assumptions about class, colour, gender and profession. However, even though the individual may conform in terms of dress, he or she remains an individual, and their private persona has usually been compressed to meet public preconceptions. In these installations Murray has been stylistically influenced by tension between the graphic, painterly and photographic elements that are often combined in the photo collages of the Russian Constructivists and early propaganda posters of communist China as well as in West African sign-writing.

Catalogue no 7, June 2007 | Softcover, 12 pages | Price: R30
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'These monotone enamel paintings reflect on our position as a viewer. They make us aware of ourselves in relation to a painting and, more broadly, of our persona and position in the world at large. They mirror our projections onto paintings, and blur the boundaries between the intention of the artist and our preconceptions. The viewer is integral to these paintings, and, in reality, the viewer's shadow and reflection is a fundamental part of the transient image. I paint in a studio in the city of Cape Town where I feel part of, but apart from, the masses of people, and in these paintings I play with my ambivalence toward anonymity in a familiar landscape'.

Catalogue no 6, June 2004 | Softcover, 12 pages | Price: R30
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Berni Searle's Vapour was shot on location on the Cape Flats and is inspired by the practice of cooking in large pots over open fires. This event is a point of departure for Searle's exploration of notions of collectiveness and community. By replacing food with water, the work is set up as performative and through it Searle explores the significance of the ritual but also of her own memories. Creating vapour, from which the exhibition draws its title, requires a huge amount of pressure or heat that builds up over a period of time, but once created dissipates into air and is difficult to capture. Through this process Searle could allude to events that have shaped our past and continue to inform our present.

Catalogue no 5, February 2004 | Softcover, 22 pages | Out of print/unavailable
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Accompanying Michael Stevenson's annual February exhibition of South African art, this catalogue provides a context for selected pieces covering the wide spectrum of art in South Africa. The works, produced in South Africa over the past two centuries, include an African meat platter from the Anglo Zulu War of 1879, an extremely rare watercolour by Samuel Daniell of a Korana woman painted on the banks of the Orange River in 1801 as well as a portrait of the Chief Kama by Frederick Timpson I'Ons and 20th-century masters Hugo Naudé, Frans Oerder, Cecil Higgs, Gerard Sekoto, Dorothy Kay, Gladys Mgudlandlu and George Pemba as well as a bronze of a Zulu man by Anton van Wouw. Contemporary artists include Guy Tillim, Sandile Zulu, Wim Botha, Deborah Poynton and Berni Searle.

Catalogue no 4, January 2004 | Softcover, 36 pages | Out of print/unavailable
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This lavishly illustrated book on Hylton Nel and his work, jointly published by Michael Stevenson and the Fine Arts Society in London, includes a long interview with Nel on his life and work. Nel describes himself as an 'artist-potter' which aptly refers to his interest in painted imagery as well as form and function. Over the past four decades he has developed a style of work that is rich in references to the decorative arts and literary and art historical sources. His plates, bowls, vases, plaques and figurative pieces are idiosyncratically decorated with witty - and sometimes poignant - line drawings and script.

2003 | Softcover, 128 pages | ISBN 0-620-31546-6 | Price: R295
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The word 'speculum' refers to 'a medical instrument for dilating the opening of a body cavity in order to examine the interior.' Serving as a common thread between the many facets of the works, it implies a process of invasion, scrutiny, inspection and introspection. Botha's installations - which incorporate sculptures, paintings and prints - reflect on the individual's absorption into the encompassing hierarchical structures of statehood and society. By visually interfering with venerated forms of art, artefact and decoration, he offers comment on the distorted and ephemeral nature of grandeur and tradition. In several of his installations this subversion of symbolic imagery alludes to the slow but inevitable decay that edifices to authority and self-importance are bound to undergo.

Catalogue no 3, 2003 | Softcover, 24 pages | Out of print/unavailable
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Boshoff has been writing dictionaries and concrete poetry since 1977. He combines these two esoteric disciplines in the making of three-dimensional 'books' so large that one may walk around in them. His exhibition Licked is a combination of such written visual poetry and three-dimensional encyclopædic installations. Boshoff's first dictionary dealt with colour terms and, over the years, he has prepared dictionaries of 'manias and phobias', 'morphology', 'psychological terms', 'rhetoric', 'the eye and vision', 'difficult English', '-ologies and '-isms', 'strange financial terms', 'monsters and demons', 'objectionable terms,' 'rude names' and 'winds of the world'. Many of these have become major installations.

Catalogue no 2, 2003 | Softcover, 32 pages | Price: R60
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Published to coincide with Berni Searle's travelling Standard Bank Young Artist exhibition in 2003, this monograph features an in-depth essay by Johannesburg-based academic Rory Bester and generous reproductions of Searle's major bodies of work from the Colour me and Discoloured series through to the video Home and away (2003).

2003 | Softcover, 72 pages | Price: R155
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"Cape Flats" refers to the vast stretch of exposed sandy wetlands that lie north of Table Mountain and which now forms a large part of the metropolitan region of Cape Town. Racked by the harsh south-easter and frequently flooded in winter, the Cape Flats is highly unsuitable for residential purposes. But today it has become home to close on a million people. The term "details" stands in contrast to the general appearance of the townships as a bleak and colourless environment - an environment, which over time, challenges one to seek and unveil hidden layers. It is in these "details" that Ledochowski found individual and collective expression of creativity and resilience that give positive meaning and definition to peoples' lives. His photographs present public and private images of hope that bring together tradition and modernity, stability and change, faith and despair.

Out of stock
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Taken in February 2002 in the Angolan province of Bie, near Kuito, Guy Tillima's series of images portrays displaced people who, in the months before the end of the civil war, fled in advance of the Angolan government's "clearing" of regions where civilians had provided cover for UNITA soldiers. The subjects had walked for five days from Monge to seek refuge in the small town of Kunhinga in the safe havens provided by foreign agencies stationed in the area. These colour portraits are a new departure for Tillim who is best known for his black-and-white reportage.

Catalogue no 1, 2003 | Softcover, 14 pages | Price: R30
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This collection of black and white photographs by Guy Tillim was released to concide with country-wide exhibitions of these works. Departure displays Tillim's distinctive aesthetic. His images are often of harsh realities, but he is seldom invasive or confrontational in his approach. He tends to look at situations from a side view, as a passive but empathetic spectator, and seeks an unusual yet humane moment to provide a lingering disquiet to the image.

2003 | Hardcover, 90 pages | Price: R295
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The launch of The Mlungu in Africa: art from the colonial period, 1840-1940, co-authored by Michael Stevenson and Michael Graham-Stewart, coincided with the opening of Michael Stevenson Contemporary gallery in May 2003. All the items featured in The Mlungu in Africa were on show at the opening exhibition entitled Contact Zones: Colonial & Contemporary. To view all the items from the book Click here. To view all the contemporary items featured at the same exhibition, Click here.

2003 | Hardcover, 112 pages | Price: R395 |
Softcover, 111pgs | Price: R295
To read the essay from The Mlungu in Africa: art from the colonial period, 1840-1940, click here

Written by Michael Stevenson, this is a study of the Randlords, their backgrounds and the accumulation of their fortunes on the diamond fields of Kimberley. The discovery of diamonds and gold in South Africa during the second half of the nineteenth century created unique opportunities for a handful of men to accumulate enormous wealth very rapidly. At the end of the century they were among the richest and most powerful individuals in the world. Most of them settled in Britain and adopted would-be aristocratic life-styles, soon becoming known as the 'South African millionaires' or 'Randlords'. Craving social acceptance and recognition, they constructed upper-class identities to transcend their modest, in some cases humble, backgrounds. They systematically acquired and displayed properties and possessions that symbolised wealth and power in Europe. Arguably, their most symbolic expenditure was on art, which they bought with the same zeal they had devoted to trading in gold and diamonds in South Africa.

2002 | Hardcover, 200 pages | Price: R395
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This catalogue accompanied Michael Stevenson's exhibition of South African paintings and sculptures at the Irma Stern Museum in February 2003. Highlights include late 19th-century African art and works by Thomas Baines, Hugo Naudé, JH Pierneef, Hans Völcker and Adolph Jentsch. Contemporary works are by ylton Nel, Deborah Poynton, Guy Tillim, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Sam Nhlengethwa and others.

2003 | Softcover | Price: R60
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This catalogue accompanied Michael Stevenson's exhibition of South African paintings and sculptures at the Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, in August 2002. Highlights include superb late 19th-century headrests and works by Thomas Walter Harper, Bertha Everard, Hugo Naude, JH Pierneef, Maggie Laubser, Strat Caldecott, Irma Stern and Cecil Higgs among others. Contemporary works are by established and emerging artists including Stanley Pinker, Karel Nel, Henry Symonds, Deborah Poynton and others.

2002 | Softcover | Price: R60
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This catalogue accompanied an exhibition of South African paintings and sculptures at Irma Stern museum, Cape Town in January 2002. Highlights include three Samuel Daniell works, a figurative staff of a North Nguni man attributed to the carver of 'Pitt-Rivers', three south-east African beadwork sashes and works by William Henry Simpson and George Crosland Robinson among others. Contemporary works are by established and emerging artists including Erik Laubser, Peter Clarke, Claude Marie Madeleine Bouscharain, Deborah Poynton and others.

2002 | Out of print
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This selection of 50 compelling photographs of people from south and east Africa offers an opportunity to re-evaluate the colonial photography of these regions. During this era, indigenous subjects usually struggled to retain their dignity and composure in the exploitative lens of the European traveller, tourist, scientist and commercial photographer. In those instances when the sitter's humanity survived the racial prejudices and technology of the time, the images often transcend their role as historical records and can be seen as provocative and poignant works of art.

2001 | Hardcover, 144 pages | Price: R570
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This, the first book devoted to beadwork from the eastern regions of southern Africa, illustrates in full colour 260 pieces of beadwork dating from 1850 to 1910. It firmly places beadwork as an art form to be displayed in art galleries and researched by art historians rather than as an artefact of interest only to ethnographers. Based on the collection of art dealers Michael Stevenson and Michael Graham-Stewart, it demonstrates the breadth and astonishing artistry of women beadworkers from the subcontinent. Together Stevenson and Graham-Stewart have acquired pieces that were collected and taken back to Europe by colonial officials, travellers, missionaries and soldiers.

Out of print
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A detailed study by Michael Stevenson of the artist's life and work. These works, exhibited in Cape Town and Johannesburg reawaked an appreciation for abstract South African art from the 1950s and 1960s. "Abstraction is a rich and complex vein in South African art that is underrated and undervalued," writes Stevenson. "Internationally works engaging with abstraction enjoy widespread critical acclaim and economic appreciation. We believe that with time the South African art in this vein will also come to be reconsidered for its aesthetic integrity and significance in the history of art".

2001 | Hardcover, 80 pages | Price: R195
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Published by Christie's, this book formed part of the first major exhibition held in London in August 1999 that focused on Thomas Baines' lifelong interest in the natural history of southern Africa. The exhibition was curated by Michael Stevenson from the extensive, but little-known collections of Baines' work held by the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Natural History Museum in London. The original works, presented to these institutions by Baines, have seldom been exhibited and are lavishly reproduced in this volume. Essays on Baines by specialist writers deal with the artist's passion for botany, astronomy, geology, ethnography, photography, cartography, zoology and ornithology. Extensive appendices with transcripts of the artist's letters, archived at the institutions, are included in this volume. The book is a worthy addition to any Africana collection and will be of interest especially to those who are fascinated by this talented artist and explorer.

1999 | Softcover, 212 pages | Out of print/unavailable
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Launched at the opening of the ArabellaSheraton Hotel in Cape Town is a full-colour catalogue on the Arabella art collection in the hotel and the Arabella Spa and Hotel in Hermanus. Michael Stevenson and Annabel Rosholt were responsible for putting the collection together, and Michael Stevenson compiled this catalogue on the collection.

Out of print

A lavishly illustrated book of the art collection housed in the new Dimension Data offices in Bryanston, Johannesburg. Subtitled The shifts between abstraction and representation in post-war South African art the book contains a selection of pieces from the full collecion. The collection explores abstraction in South African art and with its rich references to modernism and international trends, suitably reflects Didata's international aspirations and its leading role in an innovative business sphere.

2003 | Hardcover, 104 pages | Price: R395
Softcover, 104 pages | Price: R295