Hers is restless imagination played out in a daunting, experimental productivity and a willingness to surprise even herself. As we look back, the patterns of her creative acts become more legible, allowing us to see more easily the internal coherence of her body of work and the idiosyncratic logic of its unfolding.

— Colin Richards, 2005

With her earliest work, Penny Siopis established herself as one of the most talented and challenging visual artists in and beyond South Africa. Penny Siopis: Time and Again engages in a variety of ways with her work of the past thirty-five years. A conversation between the artist and the editor, Gerrit Olivier, unfolds throughout the book, giving the reader fascinating insights into her working methods, her strong interest in form and different genres, her theoretical concerns and her views on the position of art in a socio-political context.

Penny Siopis coincides with a retrospective exhibition of her work at the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town in December 2014 and the Wits Art Museum in Johannesburg in 2015.

CONTENTS

1 Becoming Alive Again — Achille Mbembe]

     i Beginnings — Penny Siopis in conversation with Gerrit Olivier

     ii Cake Paintings, History Paintings — Penny Siopis in conversation with Gerrit Olivier

2 Historical Delicacies — Jennifer Law

     iii Installation and Collection — Penny Siopis in conversation with Gerrit Olivier

3 The Artist’s Will — Jennifer Law

     iv Figuring the Unspeakable — Penny Siopis in conversation with Gerrit Olivier

4 Remembering Three Essays on Shame, Penny Siopis, Freud Museum, London 2005 — Griselda Pollock

5 The Vitality of Matter: Notes on First Form, Surfaces, Intimacy and the Social — Sarah Nuttall

    v Video Stories — Penny Siopis in conversation with Gerrit Olivier

6 Penny Siopis’s Film Fables — TJ Demos

7 Love and Politics: Sister Aidan Quinlan and the Future We Have Desired — Njabulo S Ndebele

8 A Retrospect — Penny Siopis in conversation with William Kentridge

    vi Painting on the Edge of Formlessness — Penny Siopis in conversation with Gerrit Olivier

9 An Artist’s Dance through Medium and Vision — Alessandra De Angelis

10 Penny Siopis: Desire and Disaster in Painting — Colin Richards

    vii Time Again — Penny Siopis in conversation with Gerrit Olivier

Gerrit Olivier is Professor at the Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Penny Siopis is Honorary Professor at Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. She works in painting, fi lm/video and installation. She has exhibited widely in South Africa and internationally.

Hers is restless imagination played out in a daunting, experimental productivity and a willingness to surprise even herself. As we look back, the patterns of her creative acts become more legible, allowing us to see more easily the internal coherence of her body of work and the idiosyncratic logic of its unfolding.

— Colin Richards, 2005

Penny Siopis – Tiime and Again