This month Cat Gibbard, Programme Curator at Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange looks at the work of Gavin Jantjes, whose work features in National Partners Programme Exhibition, Go On Being So.
Gavin Jantjes was born in District Six, Cape Town, South Africa in 1948. In 1976 he briefly moved to London and worked with the Poster Collective, a politically motivated group producing posters and banners in response to the miners’ strike and conflicts in Vietnam and Ireland. Jantjes’ A South African Colouring Book, a set of anti-apartheid screen prints, was exhibited at the ICA in London.
His exhibition coincided with the infamous 1976 Soweto Uprising in which students between the ages of 10 to 17 protested against the implementation of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction for their lessons rather than the student’s home languages. An estimated 20,000 young people took part nationwide.They were met with fierce police brutality. The number of fatalities has never been confirmed but 150 was the figure most frequently given.