What to do with the problematic category of the art colony? On the face of it, this question might seem anachronistic for a special issue of ARTMargins. The term art colony conjures up an image of artists retreating from urban centers in the 19th and early 20th centuries to find respite, inspiration, and the support and company of peers in areas of natural beauty. Underpinned by a zurück zur Natur (“back to nature”) philosophy and a desire to paint fisherfolk and farm laborers, rather than professional models posing as such in city ateliers, artist colonies mushroomed in coastal and rural … Read more

In this article, I contend with the theoretical possibilities and pitfalls of rereading communal spaces where black artists in South Africa congregated, studied and created art throughout the 20^th century as black artists’ colonies. Race-based spatial segregation propagated by white bureaucrats denied black artists, especially those based in the large cities of the country, access to the educational, exhibition, and market opportunities available to white artists. Black artists navigated these systems of exclusion through art colonies, many of them established by white individuals, which became creative oases where they could share, learn, produce, and showcase their art. In … Read more

This literature review takes up two books: Residencies Reflected (2024), a collection of essays on artist residencies, edited by Imeli Kokko; and Dot, Circle & Frame: The Making of Papunya Art (2023) by John Kean. The review will argue that Kean’s revisionist account of the “invention” of contemporary Aboriginal art at Papunya in Central Australia in 1971, which gives much more agency to the artists involved than previously, demonstrates that Papunya was effectively an art colony and not an artist residency. Altogether it can be argued that the making of Aboriginal art at a number of locations around Australia in … Read more

The philosopher Adam Smith once observed that when two ideas become associated through frequent repetition, they form a pattern in the imagination of the observer in which one thought eventually seems to flow on naturally from the other, like an imaginary machine. Discovery and colonization have formed such a machine in the story of Captain Cook’s Endeavour, in which artistic practice became implicated in its imperialist mission by transforming what the artists observed into objects of European desire. This photo essay is part of an ongoing investigation by the authors into the creative processes of discovery on Cook’s Endeavour… Read more

To form a creative outlook, people turn to sanggar and art group because formal education institutions have let them down. From all the graduates of fine arts studios (painting, sculpture, graphics, and so on) in our higher education institutions, those who show up in the art scene are too small a part, prompting people to question the effectiveness and benefits of those academic studios’ education.

Academic Education is now inadequate in a most fundamental way: instilling and cultivating enough motivation in pupils to work as artists according to the specialized education that they receive.

ARTMargins, Volume 14, Issue 3, … Read more

“Lead, zinc, copper, coal, gold, cadmium, silver, oil, tungsten, corundum, gasoline, nickel, marble, Glauber’s salt [and] phosphorites” flow from Kazakhstan through the “full arteries of railroads,” delivering its “industrial blood” across the Soviet Union “to feed the factories and plants,” before returning “in the shape of airplanes, tractors, excavators, automobiles [and] turbines.” This entry, under the heading “Socialist Metabolism,” appeared in an issue of the showcase journal USSR in Construction devoted to the fifteenth anniversary of Soviet Kazakhstan, cataloging the precious minerals, metals, rocks, and hydrocarbons extracted from the Central Asian republic to supply the expanding socialist industrial complex. In … Read more