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 page.
Exhibition openings and First Thursday plans
Thu, Jul 3 from 17:00 – Keyes Art Mile has the first Thursday of your month covered with Keyes Art Night. You can expect to see the exhibitions Looking Back, Seeing Now at Gallery 1 and Either way, with you at BKhz while enjoying delicious food offerings, music and more.
Opening Sat, July 5 – David Krut Projects' latest exhibition at The Blue House gallery, Still Life: A Contemporary Arrangement, brings a collection of still lives from their affiliated artists. Often overlooked as a genre, the show highlights how it is an important space for experimentation and expression. With stalwarts such as William Kentridge and Deborah Bell alongside exciting upcoming artists such as Boemo Diale, Maja Maljević, and many more, the featured works show the varied ways the genre is interpreted, and the different objects which might catch the artist's eye, inviting us to reconsider the ordinary.
Opening Sat, Jul 5 at 10:00 – Meleko Mokgosi's solo Speculations on Drawing opens at Stevenson Gallery this Saturday. Happening concurrently with his exhibition Appellations at Stevenson Cape Town, the works on show are from an ongoing project of his Spaces of Subjection, where he looks at the physical, discursive, and otherworldly, and how we form subjects in the world. The works span screen prints, etchings, chine collé, dry point, charcoal, and digital drawing on three-dimensional objects, showcasing Mokgosi's effortless balancing act of line and space to examine drawing as process, concept, and a theoretical framework.
Opening Sat, Jul 5 at 11:00 – Lizamore & Associates latest exhibition at their gallery at The Firestation takes its inspiration from Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus. Featuring work from six women artists, Phumzile Buthelezi, Ayobola Kekere-Ekun, Reneilwe Mathibe, Anastasia Pather, Vanessa Tembane, and Mbali Tshabalala, the exhibition looks at the quiet revolt of persistence in the face of the myriad challenges of getting your voice heard in the art world.
Sat, Jul 5 at 12:00 – Wits Art Museum hosts their last walkabout of Between the Cracks: Paul Weinberg curated by Fiona Rankin-Smith. For this walkabout WiSER researcher Professor Hlonipha Mokoena will be in conversation with photographer Paul Weinberg, and it offers a special chance to engage with both speakers as they share personal reflections and unique insights into the exhibition.
Sun, Jul 6 at 10:00 – Already a delightful day-trip for those wanting to get out of the city while still being able to enjoy some art, NIROX Sculpture Park adds another reason to visit with Listen To Me, a sound performance by Swiss artist Christophe Fellay in collaboration with choreographer and dancer Thulisile Binda and young artists from the Cradle of Humankind. Listen To Me aims to creatively address water issues in the Cradle of Humankind valley. Tickets are R150 and can be bought here.
Sun, Jul 6 at 11:00 – The Villa-Legodi Centre for Sculpture at NIROX hosts two book launches this Sunday, Walter Oltmann’s In Time and Richard John Forbes’ Praxis. Starting at 11:00, the event will be accompanied by discussions with both artists. Oltmann will engage with academic, Professor Brenda Schmahmann, and Forbes will converse with author and critic, Ashraf Jamal. The event is an excellent way to get more insight into these formidable artists' practices.
Sun, Jul 6 11:00-15:00 – Head to First Sundays at Victoria Yards for two tantalising events at Pulp Paperworks. Get started with the group show Third Space, which features postcards curated by Odette Graskie before Pulp launch Indlu Yesibane, a photobook by Chulumanco Makuluma.
Last chance to see
Until Thu, Jul 3 – BKhz continues to platform some of South Africa's most exciting young talents with Either way, with you, a group exhibition where the artists explore life's more tender moments. Visit their gallery at Keyes Art Mile for this moving exhibition.
Until Sun, Jul 6 – Explore the heavens at The Origins Centre with Cosmic Echoes: A shared sky indigenous art exhibition. For the exhibition, South African and Australian indigenous artists, together with The Wits Origins Centre, the SKA Observatory, and the SA Radio Astronomy Observatory, connect ancient wisdom and science.
More art highlights
Until Thu, Jul 10 – Imprints of Elsewhere, a group show at Artyli Gallery, is all about the liminal spaces where perception, memory, and emotion converge. "It moves beyond surface impressions, delving into the enduring imprints that experience and imagination leave behind," reads the curatorial statement. To illuminate this exhibition, a panel discussion on Thu, Jul 5 at 11:00 delves into artmaking, art therapy, and the connection between neurology and creativity, with insights from neurologist Dr Kirti Ranchod, art therapist Kate Shand, ceramic artist Nina Shand, and art coach Karin Basel.
Until Fri, Jul 11 – Enduring Signatures at the Sasol Art Gallery brings together artists from past Sasol New Signatures competitions. You can expect a variety of mediums on display from some of South Africa’s most exciting emerging artists. Admission is free but by appointment only.
Until Thu, Jul 24 – Goodman Gallery hosts Yinka Shonibare’s Earth Pictures, an exhibition looking at the impact of Western colonisation and industrialisation on nature and climate change across the African continent. Both beautiful and pertinent, this is an exhibition you don't want to miss.
Until Sat, Jul 26 – Between the Cracks: Paul Weinberg at Wits Art Museum brings together five decades of Weinberg's photographic work. Curated by Fiona Rankin-Smith, the photographs show ordinary people making do under extraordinary circumstances, with Weinberg's photography becoming both a "form of resistance and means of survival".
Until Thu, Jul 31 – Lizamore & Associates new gallery, Lizamore on Keyes, hosts the group show Here and Now. To mark this new chapter, Lizamore & Associates gave a few of the artists from their stable a brief to reflect on the current moment, and what has brought them to this point. A beautiful consideration from different perspectives, make sure not to miss this one.
Until end Jul 2025 – What do you get following an intense artistic engagement with a scientific subject – the 2.5-million-year-old Taung skull, which was discovered in 1924? Joni Brenner's solo exhibition at Origins Centre, Impact, which encapsulates her long-term creative reckoning with the child's skull, broadly explores themes of "fragility and survival, destruction and creation, uncertainty, loss, pressure, and chance". Unusual, poignant, and thought-provoking are a few more words that come to mind when describing Brenner's response to this ancient piece of the story of human evolution.
Until end Jul 2025 – Featuring Blessing Blaai, Sizani Baloyi, and Courtney Hodgson (also known as Umlungu), In the Quiet of Colour explores what lies beyond the rose-tinted glasses of our everyday experience. Taking place at Gallery 21 in Transwerke at Constitution Hill, the featured paintings use the duality of colour as a starting point to "question how vibrant aesthetics can mask, mediate, or even manipulate our perception of truth". The artists aim to initiate a conversation between the viewer and the truth, using painting as an intermediary – "a therapeutic voice in the background guiding us towards ourselves".
Until Thu, Aug 14 – If you're looking for art, 223 Creative Hub is the place to be with five exhibitions for you to get lost in.
Berman Contemporary has three must-see shows: Mellaney Roberts' clay sculptures pay homage to her history and ancestors in Waar Bloed Nie Loop Nie; the timely group exhibition Happy Women's Day, I guess… looks at the conflicted experience of womanhood in South Africa; and Italian composer and video artist Gianluca Iadema hosts the second instalment of The Video Project Room.
If that wasn't enough Candice Berman Contemporary adds two more exhibitions to the fray with Tanya Sternberg's mixed-media creations in Thread and Ziyanda Majozi's mosaicked masterpieces in Masters and Heroes Live Longer.
are just one of many things you can expect to see. Photo: 223 Creative Hub.
Until Mon, Aug 18 – Melrose Gallery brings together the boldest voices in contemporary African art for The Alchemy of Colour. The exhibition features artists from Melrose Gallery's stable, such as Esther Mahlangu and Paul Blomkamp, as well as many others who use colour 'not just as pigment but energy'.
Until Fri, Aug 29 – Jack Ginsberg Centre for Book Arts' exhibition Weird, Wonderful, Quirky and Peculiar uses Salvador Dali's Dix Recettes d'Immortalite (Ten Recipes for Immortality) as a launching point to bring out other strange and surreal works from their collection. Aside from what is one of Dali's great graphic works, you can expect to have your ideas of what a book should be confounded by unusual binding methods, paper, words, and images.
Until Sun, Aug 31 – Head to Keyes Art Mile to see their newly renovated Gallery 1 space with the exhibition Looking Back, Seeing Now, a powerful survey of South Africa's modernist masters.
Until Fri, Sep 5 – W17 Gallery at Workshop 17, The Bank hosts a retrospective of portrait photographer Thom Pierce's work with Perspective: Looking Back, Looking Forward. Together, the portraits and stories of these individuals shed light on the challenges and triumphs of the last decade in South Africa.
Until Sun, Sep 28 – An installation series at Museum Africa, Fashion Accounts reimagines how we collect, archive, and create memories through fashion objects. Curated by fashion designers and curators Wanda Lephoto, Erica de Greef, and Alison Moloney, it also considers the absence of black South African fashion histories in traditional museum collections. Says Lephoto, "It is in the gaps, the absences, the fragments that we need to look to find ourselves when our stories are not acknowledged in the record."
Until Sat, Nov 15 – Structures forms the second part of Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation's Worldmaking series. The exhibition sees the featured artists, architects, and the team at JCAF use research, technology, and art to explore the relations between humans and the built environment. Comprising a trilogy of exhibitions, Structures will be accompanied by talks, walkabouts, publications, and more episodes of JCAF's podcast series, Knowledge Talks. Book a guided walkabout here.
Save the date
Fri, Jul 18 to Sun, Jul 20 – Klein Wêreld is a celebration of small, affordable artworks created by talented local artists — a curated wonderland where every piece tells a quiet, powerful story. The culmination of a two-week residency, the Klein Wêreld exhibition showcases over 100 small-format artworks.
Taking place at the gorgeous Rosemary Hill and Greenhouse Cafe in Pretoria, this weekend affair lets you stroll through a thoughtfully designed exhibition, join hands-on workshops, and engage with art in playful ways. Jaco van der Merwe, artist, poet and the driving force behind Wêreld, describes the project as “a celebration of intimacy – in scale, in space and in connection.” For more details and to purchase tickets, head to their website.
Opening Thu, Jul 24 – Add the opening for One and the Many at Javett-UP to your calendar. 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".
Wed, Jul 30–Sat, Aug 2 – The much-loved Art Under the Bed returns to Joburg at the end of July. Offering a more relaxed environment than your traditional gallery, this artist-run sale is a great opportunity for new buyers, seasoned collectors, and everyone in between to peruse art from a wealth of local artists. This year, the historic Glenshiel will host the event. While entrance is free, there is limited space with bookings opening Tue, Jul 15.
Artist opportunities
Until Thu, Jul 31 – Applications are open for the University of Johannesburg's (UJ) 2026 Artists in Residence Programme. The residency aims to foster arts practice as research, and UJ invites artist-academics across various disciplines to apply before Thu, Jul 31. For more details and to apply, click here.
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