From iconic public artworks (discover a few of our favourites), interesting street art, established galleries and museums, to trailblazing indie spaces, and the hardworking artists' studios in the City Centre, Johannesburg is a city for art lovers. We update this guide weekly to help you navigate the ever-changing array on offer, with a curated selection of solo and group shows, artist-led walkabouts, workshops, guided tours, and other art-related events worth your while.
For a full guide to what’s on in Joburg, explore our events calendar. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter published every Thursday morning. For extra daily updates, follow our Instagram.
New exhibitions and events to look out for
Wed, Nov 26 – Sun, Nov 30 – Season 11 at The Centre for the Less Good Idea brings a full programme of performance, video, installation, and live collaboration to Maboneng. Curated by Neo Muyanga, the festival highlights the restless energy of Joburg’s artists and thinkers, with nightly SITE, LIGHT, ACTION | Fox Street Activations transforming Arts on Main and Fox Street into a corridor of movement, sound, and light. Expect surprises around every corner. Find the full programme and book your tickets here.
responsive experiments in movement and mark-making. Photo: The Centre for the Less Good Idea.
Opening Fri, Nov 28 at 18:00 – Post-eGoli-cene at Ellis House Art Building dives into Johannesburg’s mining past and its long shadow over the city’s people and landscapes. The exhibition gathers artists responding to environmental residue, memory, and the material traces of extraction and runs until Sun, Nov 30.
Photo: Post-eGoli-cene.
Fri, Nov 28 – Sat, Nov 29 – To mark 35 years of some of the finest printmaking in South Africa, The Artists' Press come to Keyes Art Mile with a two-day celebration that puts their printmaking excellence on full display. With talks and a selection of work from their extensive collaborations, Fri, Nov 28 will include the launch of new limited editions, accompanied by a curated jazz music set, and on Sat, Nov 29 you'll have a rare chance to browse, buy, and take home limited edition prints by some of South Africa's most significant artists, under one roof. As an added incentive, the first 30 collectors to buy a print will receive a free hand-coloured lino-cut by Simon Atwood.
Sat, Nov 29 at 11:00 – Spaza Art Gallery close the exhibition Makwande Ukukhanya-Let it be Light with modular synth ambience, poetry, and a warm community gathering in Troyeville. The closing brings together sound, ritual, and reflection over coffee and cake to celebrate the work of artists Phahlo Mtangai, Funeka Shuping, Juanita Frier James de Villiers, Stacey Haahjem, Ilse Pahl, Tutu Mkhabela, John Giovani and Winston Mkhulu.
Sat, Nov 29 at 11:00 – The grandeur of the Rand Club provides a striking backdrop for Fiver Löcker’s exploration of memory, migration, and the aftershocks of empire. The Myth of Amnesia brings together contemporary works that examine how personal and collective histories shape identity. The exhibition wraps with a closing panel discussion, After Empire on Sat, Nov 29.
Photo: Fiver Löcker.
Sat, Nov 29 at 12:00 – With Intersections: Bill Ainslie and the Johannesburg Art Foundation, Wits Art Museum revisits the radical legacy of Bill Ainslie and the Johannesburg Art Foundation, a space that championed non-racial art education in the 1980s. Curated by Wilhelm van Rensburg, head curator at Strauss & Co, and artist Kagiso Pat Mautloa, the exhibition pairs Ainslie’s lyrical abstractions with works by Foundation affiliates, supported by archival material from Michael Gardiner. A thoughtful and timely reminder of how art can build community and shape possibility. Join the curators on Sat, Nov 29 at 12:00 for a walkabout of the exhibition, which will shed deeper light on the stories linking the artworks, and the history of the Johannesburg Art Foundation.
Thu, Dec 4 – Melville launches a brand-new neighbourhood-wide art night, linking galleries, studios, and creative spaces through guided tours, pop-up events, Tuk-Tuks, and street-side happenings. With workshops, music, talks, and open doors throughout the suburb, it’s a major new addition to Joburg’s art calendar – and the perfect way to rediscover Melville’s creative heart. Book your free tickets here.
Last chance to see
Until Sat, Nov 29 – My Toxic Nostalgia at Everard Read is an elegiac series from Graham De Lacy looking at Johannesburg's vanishing mine dumps. Growing up in Crown Mines, these mine dumps were childhood playgrounds but also landscapes of toxicity and extraction. Through poetic photography, De Lacy transforms decay into a meditation on inheritance and the contradictions underpinning Johannesburg's identity.
Until Sat, Nov 29 – Photographs by David Goldblatt from the late 1970s and 1980s document the hollow aftermath of Apartheid’s ambitions after the forced removals in Fietas. With Fragments of Fietas at Goodman Gallery, Goldblatt captures the subtle marks left by time, displacement, and memory.
Until end November – Jack Ginsberg Centre for Book Arts at Wits Art Museum brings another exhibition exploring artist books with GAIA: Dialogues between the book arts, natural sciences & plant humanities. The exhibition brings pressings, books, and other curious displays from the centre's collection that reflect our place in the world and our responsibility towards it.
Until end November – Lizamore on Keyes has two unique exhibitions for you to enjoy. Beyond Space and Time features sculptural jewellery from Martina Dempf and Farieda Nazier, while upstairs playful works by Ruan Jooste, Kai–Anne Marie, Marina Walsh and Nick Walsh are brought together for Cabinet of Curiosity.
Until end November – With the G20 summit in Johannesburg this November, Latitudes Centre for the Arts present their most international exhibition yet. On Behalf Of features 27 artists from across Africa, focusing on voices which are too often marginalised.
Until end November – Asisebenze Art Gallery partners with Origin Art for Re-use, Re-purpose, Re-imagine. A group exhibition of artists who, through their subject matter or the ways they transform waste, point to futures of renewal and regeneration. Featuring Pam Friedman, Janet Ormond, Nic Human, Mathew Blackburn, Mmutla Mashishi, Kutlwano Monyai, Mncedi Madolo, Natasha Crastens, Nqobile Nxumalo, and Ditiro Mashigo.
More art highlights
Until Sat, Dec 6 – BKhz bring together an impressive roster including Mary Sibande, Alka Dass, Abongile Sidzumo, Turiya Magadlela and Lawrence Lemaoana for The Space Between Attempts. Through diverse materials and approaches, the exhibition considers thresholds, gestures, and moments of transition, and is an engaging study of artistic process and persistence.
Until Sat, Dec 20 – In Marks We Keep at Gallery 2, The Printing Girls explore the prints, gestures and hands that remember what was being said. A delicate show of collective memory, quiet moments and the shared ink of making, Marks We Keep is intimate, process-driven and deeply human.
Until Wed, Dec 31 – Sophie at the Opera – Dressed in Mantsho at Everard Read's Circa Gallery is a landmark collaboration between visual artist Mary Sibande and fashion designer Palesa Mokubung, founder of Mantsho. The show centres Sibande’s enduring muse “Sophie” now reimagined in couture. From the uniform of servitude to a vision of possibility, the exhibition charts transformation, narrative, and the power of black women’s dreams.
Photo: Everard Read Gallery.
Until Wed, Dec 31 – Andrzej Urbanski ventures into the dualities of masculinity at Everard Read with Continuum. Through bold abstractions that shift between angular vibrancy and soft curves, this body of work invites contemplation of visual form as emotional terrain.
Photo: Everard Read.
Until end December – Celebrate the festive season with colour, rhythm, and emotion at Colour Is What You See, a solo exhibition by Zolile Petshane. Exploring colour as a universal language, Petshane’s vibrant canvases capture the energy of life and the poetry of perception. The show marks Lizamore at The Firestation’s final exhibition of 2025, a fitting close to a year defined by creativity and collaboration.
Until end December – Candice Berman Gallery at 223 Creative Hub has three exhibitions for you to enjoy all in one place. Transformation unfolds as both process and poetry in Metamorphosis, a duo exhibition by Ingrid Uys and Elli Wahl. Then Imvelaphi sees Themba Khumalo delve into ancestry, spirituality, and identity. His latest works honour cultural continuity while reflecting on how past practices evolve in the present in a powerful meditation on belonging and transformation. And The New Vanguard returns with its fourth edition Flesh and Facade. The artists featured explore the body, identity, and material through works by a new generation of creatives grappling with vulnerability, memory, and cultural expression. The exhibition has been curated in collaboration with University of Johannesburg and student curator Shui Hoppenstein.
Until early 2026 – Johannesburg Art Gallery, in collaboration with First Floor Gallery Harare, presents Sugar Coats – Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude’s first solo exhibition at the museum, following his award of the 2024 FNB Art Prize. In Sugar Coats, Nyaude tackles the disempowerment of the youth, bringing into play the vestiges of colonialism that still entrap Zimbabwe, skewed systems of justice, and a culture of consumerism.
Until Sun, Jan 11, 2026 – Gallery 1 at Keyes Art Mile hosts the group exhibition Thorned. Bringing together a host of South African greats, the exhibition explores how, in the feeling of pain, there is also love and beauty. See how artists Wim Botha, Alexis Preller, Judith Mason, Cecil Skotnes, Cecily Sash, Helmut Starcke, and Beezy Bailey transform their pain through their art.
Until Thu, Jan 15, 2026 – The Light We Carry gathers a remarkable inter-generational line-up at Melrose Gallery in celebration of Dr Esther Mahlangu’s 90th birthday. From Mahlangu’s iconic geometry to Ndabuko Ntuli’s textured sculptural forms, Aza Mansongi’s expressive gestures and Nicola Roos’ monumental samurai figure, the exhibition foregrounds the enduring radiance of pan-African creativity across painting, sculpture, photography and mixed media.
Until Sun, Jan 18, 2026 – Windows 86, a solo exhibition by multimedia artist Fred Clarke at W17 Gallery in Workshop 17 The Bank, is an expansive movement across mediums – painting, drawing, print, and collage, but also sonic and video experimentation. The result is an exhibition that is at once varied while being rooted in an evolving language of marks, symbols, and messages, with the artist exploring themes of technology, biology, and psychedelia, and the strange ways these intersect and shape each other.
Until Wed, Jan 21, 2026 – the gallery at 44 Stanley gathers a vibrant mix of artists exploring landscapes, imagined, remembered, and observed, through prints, one-offs, and collaborative editions for Shared Perspectives. With contributions from 50ty/50ty and Eleven Editions alongside works by Nicole Clare Fraser and Fiona Pole, the exhibition highlights how shared making can deepen our sense of place and creative possibility.
Until Fri, Jan 23, 2026 – Kufunga naMavara (to think in colour) is a vibrant cross-border collaboration between Gallery MOMO and First Floor Gallery Harare, celebrating Zimbabwe’s contemporary painters. This energetic group show brings together bold colourists and dynamic mark-makers, and offers a richly textured snapshot of Zimbabwe’s current art vocabulary.
Until Sat, Jan 31 – David Krut Projects offers a highlight reel of collaborations at the print workshop with A Year of Mark-Making at The Blue House Gallery. This exhibition brings together works by Mary Sibande, William Kentridge, Lady Skollie, Oupa Sibeko, Olivia Pintér, the David Krut Collective, and many more, and is a varied celebration of ink, paper, and the many hands behind the editions.
Until Sat, Jan 31, 2026 – Tofo Bardi debuts her first South African solo exhibition with Ungrounded: Nothing to Hold at Stevenson Gallery. Blending painting and ceramics in a haunting meditation on psyche, spirit, and the ‘uncanny’, Bardi draws on Yoruba cosmologies and existential thought. The works conjure ghostly figures, ethereal landscapes, and layered textures that reflect the troubled mind and a world in flux.
Photo: Stevenson Gallery.
Until Sat, Jan 31, 2026 – SBYA Visual Art 1984 - Now at the Standard Bank Art Lab celebrates 40 years of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Arts, and four decades of South African art history in the process. By gathering these myriad artistic perspectives, curator Same Mdluli brings an exhibition that signposts epochal shifts and socio-political transformations in our modern and contemporary histories.
Until Sat, Feb 7 – In Soft Release at David Krut's The Blue House Gallery, Heidi Fourie presents a solo exhibition of paintings and unique works on paper drawn from her 2025 residencies in wilderness settings. She explores the boundary between human and natural worlds, weaving personal encounters with wildlife and the emotional terrain of reconnection into her luminous, reflective compositions.
Until Sun, Feb 15, 2026 – After a stint at Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation, BIENALSUR 2025, a decentralised international biennale, comes to Origins Centre with Our Wandering Continents – Argentine artist Marcela Cabutti's tracing of geological histories and drifting continents. In this poetic, research-driven exhibition, Cabutti uses rock archives and cartographic fragments to shift between scientific observation and imaginative leaps in a meditation on the Earth as a body in motion.
Photo: Origins Centre.
Until Sun, Feb 15, 2026 – Origins Centre present Ngezandla Zethu: Stories of African Basketry in Rural Kwazulu, an exhibition of North Nguni basketry that traces weaving traditions across 20,000 years. The exhibition draws from self-help projects active in rural KwaZulu and Zululand in the late 70s–90s, and the research by Pam McLaren and curation by Naeema Hussein El Kout and Goeun Botha foregrounds makers whose work has long sustained communities and cultural memory.
Until Sat, Feb 21, 2026 – Icelandic artist Erla Haraldsdóttir brings her multidisciplinary process to Origins Centre with the exhibition Imagine Visionary Animals. Haraldsdóttir explores memory and ancestral narratives in her work, and by playing with an interplay of light, colour, and perspective, she creates portals that connect symbols and experience across millennia.
Until April 30, 2026 – One and the Many at Javett-UP brings the old and the new together. This group exhibition will explore the way in which artists navigate the relationship between the individual and the collective. By bringing leading South African contemporary artists into dialogue with the collections at Javett-UP, it promises to be a fascinating exhibition that "aims to open up different possibilities for reading images and artwork."
Ongoing – NIROX Sculpture Park and the exhibition at the Villa-Legodi Centre for Sculpture, Villa+ the next generation is an ambitious project across their grounds and interior spaces, looking at the work and influence of Edoardo Villa. Featuring sculptures by Nicholas Hlobo, Willem Boshoff, William Kentridge, Serge Alain Nitegeka, Jane Alexander, Jackson Hlungwani, and Walter Oltmann, as well as 35 of Villa's works, the exhibition is "a conversation across generations, rooted in sculptural mastery, innovation and cultural diversity."
Listen
Every Wednesday – Hosted by Refiloe Mpakanyane, Season Two of The Latitudes Podcast offers a dynamic, in-depth exploration of the art world in Africa through 12 curated episodes, structured across four interconnected themes. Through thoughtful conversations with artists, curators, collectors, and cultural leaders, it's an excellent dive into the continent’s creative ecosystem.
Programme dependent – JCAF Knowledge Talks is a series of one-on-one conversations led by art critic Ashraf Jamal. Recorded in JCAF’s Reading Room, in each episode, we learn about a different discipline with an expert in the field with talks revolving around themes from JCAF's exhibitions. Most recently, Igshaan Adams, featured in their exhibition Structures, was on the show.
Save the date
Sat, Dec 6 11:00–15:00 – Six artists reimagine Johannesburg’s shifting inner landscapes in Emergent Visions at the Joburg Artist Market, a new arts-focused repurposing of 27 Boxes. Emergent Visions is a group show that drifts between memory, imagination and the not-yet-seen. Expect works that tap into the city’s unknown thresholds from artists Alpheus Ngoepe, Bekezela Mabena, Khotso Motsoeneng, Lindelwa Matsebula, Mpho Machate and Nwabisa Nklokwane.Sat, Dec 6 12:00–18:00 – London-based South African graffiti artist Drake returns home for a one-day takeover at Grayscale Gallery with D-TALE. Expect live painting, new works, merch and the kind of energy that only Grayscale and Braam can deliver.
Thu, Dec 11 17:00–20:00 – Celebrate the year with Lizamore & Associates at the Firestation with a gathering of art, food and drink as well as an evening walkabout of Zolile Petshane's exhibition Colour is what you see. Then on Fri, Dec 12 head to Lizamore on Keyes for a hands-on workshop (14:00–17:00) and a walkabout of their exhibitions at Keyes from 17:00 to 20:00).
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