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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.
Walkabouts, workshops, and open studios
Sat, Jun 14 at 10:30 – Joni Brenner hosts a workshop on clay slam sculptures for her exhibition IMPACT at Origins Centre. The exhibition explores the force and interaction required in clay sculpture creation and the workshop is a great way to get a hands-on experience. Tickets are R150 and available here.
Sat, Jun 14 from 11:00 – 16:00 – Head to NIROX this Saturday for an open studio of current residents Stacey Ravvero and Ruth Sacks. The works on display are responses to the rock formations in the Cradle of Humankind and visitors will have the chance to make their own clay sculptures using the rock surfaces at NIROX.
Sat, Jun 14 from 11:30 – 12:30 – Wits Art Museum hosts a free Family Make-and-Create workshop inspired by the exhibition Between the Cracks: Paul Weinberg. After an interactive treasure hunt through the exhibition for inspiration, you'll get a chance to let your own creativity run wild. The workshop is suitable for all ages and all materials are provided. WAM's workshops always offer something different and are not to be missed!
Sat, Jun 14 at 13:30 – No End Contemporary's group exhibition FICTION asks "Is all art a form of fiction?". Join No End and some of the featured artists for a walkabout exploring the line between truth and invention, and how we construct our worlds and realities.
Last chance to see
Until Thu, Jun 19 – Guns and Rain presents Ayobola Kekere-Ekun's Winners Take All, a follow-up on her previous exhibition High Stakes. Kekere-Ekun’s glamorous card-playing characters represent those who transform election cycles into an extended sequence of high-stakes poker games; her searing critique of the performative nature of democracy couldn't be more timely.
More art highlights
Until Sat, Jun 21 – Get lost in the intersections of the conscious and unconscious with Megan Shapiro, The Creatory's current artist-in-residence. Shapiro brings several completed works, along with her tools, to make the space part studio, part exhibition. Her 3D pen series is truly one-of-a-kind. Visit her at The Creatory at 223 Creative Hub to see how she brings her 3D pen sculptures to life.
Until Sat, Jun 21 – We Turned Off the Road is a solo exhibition at Everard Read by Joburg-based artist Neill Wright. By layering a variety of techniques such as painting, sanding, and stencilling, he builds imaginary, dreamlike landscapes that explore the notion of escapism. Central to Wright's work is colour: "I’m drawn to bright, discordant, electric palettes. They resonate. Everyone connects with colour".
Until Sun, Jun 22 – Head to 223 Jan Smuts Creative Hub for an exciting new exhibition opening. Hosted at Berman Contemporary, two artists in the gallery's stable come together for Strand by Strand. In this exhibition, Hazel Mphande and Kamogelo Machaba explore the history of black hair and the politics and tension surrounding it. Using a variety of media, they bring to life the world of black women and the connections between cultural and personal identity.
Until Fri, Jun 27 – Ukwanda kwaliwa ngumthakathi is Mawande Ka Zenzile’s 10th solo show at Stevenson Gallery. The exhibition is both a celebration of this milestone as well as an exploration of art and spirituality, inspired by Mawande’s journey to become an iTola (a war-priest or diviner in traditional Xhosa society). Mawande boldly moves between mediums and practices, and the exhibition, rich in both substance and form, embodies Mawande’s words that "Art is one of those lexicons that doesn’t limit meaning to syntax".
Until Fri, Jun 27 – Gallery MOMO presents Bulumko Mbete’s Like the sky I’ve been too quiet. The 2023 Absa L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto winner, Mbete continues her exploration of memory and stories. Through four installation-based works, Mbete reflects on a road trip her grandfather took in 1997, in the process asking what it means to leave our mark on the world while still honouring what came before us.
Until Sat, Jun 28 – Join artist Daneel Thumbiran at Bag Factory Artist Studios for his exhibition Brahmacarya. The title pays homage to the first stage of life in the Hindu tradition and is dedicated to learning. Thumbiran shows what an exciting process this can be as he dabbles with large-scale wheat-pasted works to sketches, and other small elements from his notebook.
Until Sat, Jun 28 – The FADA Gallery brings layered reflections on Johannesburg with Waiting and Remembering by Senzeni Marasela and Xenopolis by Heinrich Nieuman. The two solos work in dialogue to contrast the multifaceted sides of the city.
Until end Jun 2025 – If you're looking for something fun, we have just the thing: Playground by artist Motelseven7 at Grayscale Gallery in Braamfontein. Cheeky and colourful, this solo is a celebration of the ethos of graffiti and street art that Grayscale is famous for. Playground is exactly what its name promises: a playground created by the artist for visitors to explore.
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.
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 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 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 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. Booking a guided walkabout here.
Save the date
Sat, Jun 21 at 11:00 – Join artist Joni Brenner for a walkabout of her solo exhibition IMPACT. The exhibition is a response to the 2.5-2.8-million-year-old Taung skull and looks at themes of fragility and survival, destruction and creation, uncertainty, loss, pressure, and chance. Tickets are R60 for adults and R30 for kids, and are available here.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".
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