A hearty thank you and quick update.

Johannesburg, April 2012

News of two exhibitions and one publication follow after the jump.

I've had a wonderful last few months. Part of it involved my birthday. On the night preceding it, which is the traditional point of celebration in Germany, I took part in an exhibition in Hamburg. The people behind the gallery turned off the lights at midnight and brought out a tray of candles for me to blow out. I blew them all out. I realize in retrospect that you're supposed to leave one or two burning for tradition's sake. I guess I've always been very competitive.

The exhibition, which took place in the Raum Links-Rechts in the Gängerviertel was well attended and Andre Trantraal (who had also come up for the show) and I got lots of interest from the Hamburgians. There were I think two other exhibitions happening at the Gängerviertel that night and we all enjoyed a large circulation of Gänger-goers. One of the exhibitions was a Finnish husband and wife team who built a fantastic wooden horse and rider and had built robots that pushed trolleys around in the upstairs section. Another was a pair of brothers from Berlin who covered quite a large space with hundreds of repetitions of one or two images.

I'm very grateful to the Goethe-Institut who provided an airline ticket for me to get up there (and back). Thank you!

The second batch of news, was taking part in the second round of the Independent Publishing Project, curated by Francis Burger and Jonah Sack, hosted, coincidentally, by the Johannesburg Goethe-Institut. The project ran from March 15 until April 26. I was there for the last week or so. It was a very cool project to be involved in. So, thank you Francis, Jonah and the Goethe-Institute.

For this project I produced a booklet of short stories and illustrations. I printed a very limited edition there, which I numbered and signed. I will be making a not-limited second edition in Cape Town in the next week. I'm not sure whether I'll try sell it in shops or not, but I'll post a few images of it soon and if you think it's the sort of thing you'd want to have hanging around in your home, you could always email me and we could always come to some sort of compromise.

Photographs follow.

Andre Trantraal

Gregor Straube

Of Anton Kannemeyer

Andre talking about the work of his and his brother Nathan Trantraal.

The Finnish.

A birthday photograph.

The brothers from Berlin.

Maik.