In 1978, while studying print-making in Hamburg, Gavin Jantjes was deemed a persona non grata by South Africa. His crime? Creating a series of prints that documented the violence and discrimination in the apartheid state, which he gathered together under the tongue-in-cheek name of a "colouring book".
“South Africa wanted me extradited,” he tells The National at the opening of his major exhibition in London. “I never went home again for the next 25 years.”
Jantjes, whose exhibition To Be Free! A Retrospective of Gavin Jantjes is on show at the Whitechapel Gallery, was already in the anti-apartheid movement and was granted asylum by Germany in 1973. But his art – A South African Colouring Book – got him banned.
The terrific show at the Whitechapel tells the story of Jantjes’s art and activism over the course of five decades. And it also raises crucial questions about the role of politics in art – and what kind of burden that places on the artist.
“The title of the exhibition – To Be Free – is really important,” says the Whitechapel’s director Gilane Tawadros, who has known Jantjes for years. “Gavin occupies a singular position in British and international art history, as an artist and as an activist and curator. What’s important is that he has been so attuned to what an artist needs to be at different moments in history.”
Jantjes made his early screen prints in the 1970s as crackdowns in South Africa were becoming increasingly brutal. The works bristle with the urgency of testimony in their need to make the public aware of the realities of apartheid.
Headlines from newspapers share space with images of violence. In Freedom Hunters (1977), a young man is repeated twice – in an echo of Andy Warhol’s Elvis screen prints – holding what appears to be a rubbish bin lid as a shield. Barbed wire bisects the work, while media images of young protestors show the scale of resistance.
But from this moment onwards, the show reveals Jantjes's artworks move further away from politics – and ends in pure abstraction. It is like watching a character shed coat after coat, until finally floating away.
After working in screen printing, Jantjes turned to oil painting. In part because, he says, his wife didn’t want him bringing his new baby to a studio full of heavy machinery. The composition of these early paintings is still collage-like, carrying multiple items in the picture frame and maintaining the role of witness. Amaxesha Wesikolo ne Sintsuku (Schooldays and Nights, 1978) documents the Soweto uprising, when police opened fire on schoolchildren, killing hundreds. In Jantjes’s painting, a white man looks askance at three black figures: a woman falls into the centre of the work, a father who seems in shock or about to shout and a child lying lifeless on the ground.
Then Jantjes changed tack once again. In the 1990s, he created three major bodies of work in oblique, imagined settings on slavery, African tradition and the extractive relationship between the West and Africa.
“I wanted to get away from constantly talking about apartheid,” he recalls. “Firstly, I chose a different subject. This was the history of slavery, in the seven pictures of the Korabra series. These were more of what I call poetic pictures. A lot of it was invented, instead of being taken from photographs.”
He also began playing around with material – an artistic shift for which he again credits his safety-conscious wife. She wanted him to stop painting in oil, because she worried about turpentine being carcinogenic (turpentine is used to remove oil paint). He agreed and, at an anti-apartheid exhibition in Paris, he happened to ask the noted Spanish painter Antoni Tapies where he bought his acrylic paints. Tapies explained he made it himself, by simply mixing pigment with glue.
Jantjes realised he could achieve extremely saturated, bright paint from this technique – then refined it further. To depict the landscape of slavery, he added materials such as sugar and cotton to the paint – making the cash crops, for which the plantation owners of the American South bought enslaved Africans, part of the work itself.
For the Zulu series, he looked at the night sky as the single shared entity between all Africans, offering it as a measure of optimism rather than censure. And alongside some of his paintings, he made small wax statues like votive offerings.
“The question was how to make work but have it not be determined by politics,” he says. “How do you represent colonialism without making an obvious statement, like in the images of the uprising? You look at the hobbies of the colonialists and you reduce colonialism to that classic top hat and umbrella – or you make a link of slave chains, but on fire.”
Jantjes as curator and advocate
To Be Free! opened last year at the Sharjah Art Foundation, curated by Salah Hassan, the director of the Africa Institute. It appears at the Whitechapel in collaboration with Tawadros and Cameron Foote and is in some sense a homecoming. Jantjes played a leading role among the cultural figures in London of the 1980s who opened up space for artists from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Middle East – who had, up to that point, been largely ignored by the British art world.
He co-curated the exhibition From Two Worlds, in which many diaspora artists showed and which appeared at the Whitechapel in London and was instrumental in setting up the Institute of International Visual Arts, or Iniva, for which Tawadros served as founding director.
He also participated in The Other Story, the celebrated exhibition at the Hayward in 1989, which was put together by the artist Rashed Araeen. Among his six works was his now-famous untitled painting from 1989 that shows a Fang mask exhaling a breath that reaches behind it to encircle a female figure from Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), in a clear comment on western modernism’s African debts. Later, as a curator and director at different institutions, he gave major shows to artists such as Ghada Amer and Susan Hiller.
Ultimately, however, championing other artists took away from his own output.
“He felt that he couldn't be a curator or artistic director and be a painter at the same time,” says Tawadros. "So he decided to stop painting while he was working as artistic director [from 1998 to 2004] at Henie Onstad [outside of Oslo].”
Finally, after a long hiatus, in the mid-2010s, he returned to painting. The works are a surprise, even if the narrative – of a move towards abstraction – has been the leitmotif of the exhibition. They are ethereal swirls of paint in pastel, even hallucinogenic colours, that waft onto the canvas.
“They lose all subjectivity,” says Jantjes of the acrylics, which he builds up in thin layers."
Tawadros says: "These really dreamy, poetic works have no obvious subject matter. They're just inviting you to have a conversation with the artwork – not to have a political or historical narrative, but simply to be with the work. For me, the exhibition is a journey about what political and artistic freedom means.”
Global state-owned investor ranking by size
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Zidane's managerial achievements
La Liga: 2016/17
Spanish Super Cup: 2017
Uefa Champions League: 2015/16, 2016/17, 2017/18
Uefa Super Cup: 2016, 2017
Fifa Club World Cup: 2016, 2017
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
- Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
Three trading apps to try
Sharad Nair recommends three investment apps for UAE residents:
- For beginners or people who want to start investing with limited capital, Mr Nair suggests eToro. “The low fees and low minimum balance requirements make the platform more accessible,” he says. “The user interface is straightforward to understand and operate, while its social element may help ease beginners into the idea of investing money by looking to a virtual community.”
- If you’re an experienced investor, and have $10,000 or more to invest, consider Saxo Bank. “Saxo Bank offers a more comprehensive trading platform with advanced features and insight for more experienced users. It offers a more personalised approach to opening and operating an account on their platform,” he says.
- Finally, StashAway could work for those who want a hands-off approach to their investing. “It removes one of the biggest challenges for novice traders: picking the securities in their portfolio,” Mr Nair says. “A goal-based approach or view towards investing can help motivate residents who may usually shy away from investment platforms.”
How the bonus system works
The two riders are among several riders in the UAE to receive the top payment of £10,000 under the Thank You Fund of £16 million (Dh80m), which was announced in conjunction with Deliveroo's £8 billion (Dh40bn) stock market listing earlier this year.
The £10,000 (Dh50,000) payment is made to those riders who have completed the highest number of orders in each market.
There are also riders who will receive payments of £1,000 (Dh5,000) and £500 (Dh2,500).
All riders who have worked with Deliveroo for at least one year and completed 2,000 orders will receive £200 (Dh1,000), the company said when it announced the scheme.
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
Torque: 450Nm at 6,100rpm
Transmission: 7-speed PDK auto or 6-speed manual
Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
On sale: Available to order now
PREMIER LEAGUE FIXTURES
Saturday (UAE kick-off times)
Watford v Leicester City (3.30pm)
Brighton v Arsenal (6pm)
West Ham v Wolves (8.30pm)
Bournemouth v Crystal Palace (10.45pm)
Sunday
Newcastle United v Sheffield United (5pm)
Aston Villa v Chelsea (7.15pm)
Everton v Liverpool (10pm)
Monday
Manchester City v Burnley (11pm)
Results
Stage Two:
1. Mark Cavendish (GBR) QuickStep-AlphaVinyl 04:20:45
2. Jasper Philipsen (BEL) Alpecin-Fenix
3. Pascal Ackermann (GER) UAE Team Emirates
4. Olav Kooij (NED) Jumbo-Visma
5. Arnaud Demare (FRA) Groupama-FDJ
General Classification:
1. Jasper Philipsen (BEL) Alpecin-Fenix 09:03:03
2. Dmitry Strakhov (RUS) Gazprom-Rusvelo 00:00:04
3. Mark Cavendish (GBR) QuickStep-AlphaVinyl 00:00:06
4. Sam Bennett (IRL) Bora-Hansgrohe 00:00:10
5. Pascal Ackermann (GER) UAE Team Emirates 00:00:12
Quick%20facts
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Ferrari 12Cilindri specs
Engine: naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V12
Power: 819hp
Torque: 678Nm at 7,250rpm
Price: From Dh1,700,000
Available: Now
The specs
- Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
- Power: 640hp
- Torque: 760nm
- On sale: 2026
- Price: Not announced yet
Results
5pm: Maiden (PA) Dh80,000 (Turf) 1,600m; Winner: Aahid Al Khalediah II, Pat Cosgrave (jockey), Helal Al Alawi (trainer)
5.30pm: Handicap (PA) Dh80,000 (T) 2,200m; Winner: Whistle, Harry Bentley, Abdallah Al Hammadi
6pm: Wathba Stallions Cup - Maiden (PA) Dh70,000 (T) 1,600m; Winner: Alsaied, Szczepan Mazur, Ibrahim Al Hadhrami
6.30pm: Emirates Fillies Classic – Prestige (PA) Dh100,000 (T) 1,600m; Winner: Mumayaza, Antonio Fresu, Eric Lemartinel
7pm: Emirates Colts Classic – Prestige (PA) Dh100,000 (T) 1,600m; Winner: Hameem, Adrie de Vries, Abdallah Al Hammadi
7.30pm: President’s Cup – Group 1 (PA) Dh2,500,000 (T) 2,200m; Winner: Somoud, Richard Mullen, Jean de Roualle
8pm: President’s Cup – Listed (TB) Dh380,000 (T) 1,400m; Winner: Medahim, Richard Mullen, Satish Seemar
Turning%20waste%20into%20fuel
%3Cp%3EAverage%20amount%20of%20biofuel%20produced%20at%20DIC%20factory%20every%20month%3A%20%3Cstrong%3EApproximately%20106%2C000%20litres%3C%2Fstrong%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EAmount%20of%20biofuel%20produced%20from%201%20litre%20of%20used%20cooking%20oil%3A%20%3Cstrong%3E920ml%20(92%25)%3C%2Fstrong%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3ETime%20required%20for%20one%20full%20cycle%20of%20production%20from%20used%20cooking%20oil%20to%20biofuel%3A%20%3Cstrong%3EOne%20day%3C%2Fstrong%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EEnergy%20requirements%20for%20one%20cycle%20of%20production%20from%201%2C000%20litres%20of%20used%20cooking%20oil%3A%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3E%E2%96%AA%20Electricity%20-%201.1904%20units%3Cbr%3E%E2%96%AA%20Water-%2031%20litres%3Cbr%3E%E2%96%AA%20Diesel%20%E2%80%93%2026.275%20litres%3C%2Fstrong%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
MATCH INFO
Manchester City 2 (Mahrez 04', Ake 84')
Leicester City 5 (Vardy 37' pen, 54', 58' pen, Maddison 77', Tielemans 88' pen)
Man of the match: Jamie Vardy (Leicester City)
MATCH INFO
Delhi Daredevils 174-4 (20 ovs)
Mumbai Indians 163 (19.3 ovs)
Delhi won the match by 11 runs
MATCH INFO
Mainz 0
RB Leipzig 5 (Werner 11', 48', 75', Poulsen 23', Sabitzer 36')
Man of the Match: Timo Werner (RB Leipzig)
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
WHAT IS A BLACK HOLE?
1. Black holes are objects whose gravity is so strong not even light can escape their pull
2. They can be created when massive stars collapse under their own weight
3. Large black holes can also be formed when smaller ones collide and merge
4. The biggest black holes lurk at the centre of many galaxies, including our own
5. Astronomers believe that when the universe was very young, black holes affected how galaxies formed
The biog
Place of birth: Kalba
Family: Mother of eight children and has 10 grandchildren
Favourite traditional dish: Al Harees, a slow cooked porridge-like dish made from boiled cracked or coarsely ground wheat mixed with meat or chicken
Favourite book: My early life by Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, the Ruler of Sharjah
Favourite quote: By Sheikh Zayed, the UAE's Founding Father, “Those who have no past will have no present or future.”
LA LIGA FIXTURES
Thursday (All UAE kick-off times)
Sevilla v Real Betis (midnight)
Friday
Granada v Real Betis (9.30pm)
Valencia v Levante (midnight)
Saturday
Espanyol v Alaves (4pm)
Celta Vigo v Villarreal (7pm)
Leganes v Real Valladolid (9.30pm)
Mallorca v Barcelona (midnight)
Sunday
Atletic Bilbao v Atletico Madrid (4pm)
Real Madrid v Eibar (9.30pm)
Real Sociedad v Osasuna (midnight)
The biog
Hobbies: Salsa dancing “It's in my blood” and listening to music in different languages
Favourite place to travel to: “Thailand, as it's gorgeous, food is delicious, their massages are to die for!”
Favourite food: “I'm a vegetarian, so I can't get enough of salad.”
Favourite film: “I love watching documentaries, and am fascinated by nature, animals, human anatomy. I love watching to learn!”
Best spot in the UAE: “I fell in love with Fujairah and anywhere outside the big cities, where I can get some peace and get a break from the busy lifestyle”
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Gothia Cup 2025
4,872 matches
1,942 teams
116 pitches
76 nations
26 UAE teams
15 Lebanese teams
2 Kuwaiti teams
Easter%20Sunday
%3Cp%3EDirector%3A%20Jay%20Chandrasekhar%3Cbr%3EStars%3A%20Jo%20Koy%2C%20Tia%20Carrere%2C%20Brandon%20Wardell%2C%20Lydia%20Gaston%3Cbr%3ERating%3A%203.5%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
MATCH INFO
What: Brazil v South Korea
When: Tonight, 5.30pm
Where: Mohamed bin Zayed Stadium, Abu Dhabi
Tickets: www.ticketmaster.ae
SHADOWS%20AND%20LIGHT%3A%20THE%20EXTRAORDINARY%20LIFE%20OF%20JAMES%20MCBEY
%3Cp%3EAuthor%3A%20Alasdair%20Soussi%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EPages%3A%20300%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EPublisher%3A%20Scotland%20Street%20Press%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EAvailable%3A%20December%201%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Rashid & Rajab
Director: Mohammed Saeed Harib
Stars: Shadi Alfons, Marwan Abdullah, Doaa Mostafa Ragab
Two stars out of five
