"I don’t get why these kids think they’re the first. There’s a lacking in historical referencing and reverencing. Their art doesn’t take any risks. It doesn’t love itself. It doesn’t love people. It’s only interested in power; not even power, it’s all vanity. And I don’t think people are looking at books enough."

"Let me explain. When I was young, I used to watch the fishermen by the banks of the Senegal river. They were working close to the desert in intense heat, and whenever they stopped working they would start to sing."

"“Since being a young child, Esther had a will to paint,”"

"Esther Mahlangu has worked tirelessly exposing and developing her talent travelling around the world, and she is very passionate about sharing her knowledge with the younger generation so that she leaves a legacy that lives on for generations to come."

"People from all over the world, who are the most rigorous thinkers, were making work out of stuff in real time. That’s not necessarily paint on canvas; it’s material and matter that speaks. It blew my mind. I cried for a year. I couldn’t. I had a breakdown because I realised the depth of the deception and how far and controlled it was. Seeing people of colour make art in my lifetime blew me the fuck away."

"Art is an offering, a show that mirrors the show we form around ourselves as we move through our scenery."

"One of the most famous artists in South Africa, Mahlangu is a living tourist attraction, although visitors are few and far between in this far-flung village, two hours’ drive from the nearest city. And she is indisputably the most honoured gogo – Zulu for grandmother – of the Ndebele who remain in the Mpumalanga homelands."

"“She has spanned the horizon of both painting locally and painting globally.”"

"In life, as in pictures, there is only the Romantic. Behind the scenes of our lives, there is everything unspoken, unseen, unknown and nothing."

"When I work I see the picture and my hand will go over the wool and I know where I will have the image. Sometimes I change it again and take out all the wool, start over till I am happy with it. It is a slow process, for painters it must be easier."

"Art is always artful, a ruse, a trick. It is a court fool, jumping up and down, aping its masters. Art is part of the dream that we inhabit."

"“It’s somewhat problematic when looking at South African art and Western art—with mostly Western art taking and African art giving. The way that African art was appropriated is more of a taker’s attitude. I want to see the art history written that pays as much tribute to the originality of this South African heritage that we also see in Mahlangu’s art as to Keith Haring.”"

"There is relief in dwelling in a not-new picture, in embracing the foolishness of the formula, in discovering the beauty of each small detail that is woven into the picturesque whole. And while we are there, noticing the leaves, the clouds, the way the paint has described the folds of silk, perhaps something indescribable can be felt."

"Poynton's paintings are more about the act of looking, of exposing the "trickery" behind traditional artistic practices, than they are windows onto a surreal world."

"I lived in many different places as I was growing up. This gave me an awareness of difference, the understanding that security cannot be found in the outside world."

"While most of her work can be categorized as realism, a few series depart from her usual aesthetic in a more abstract project. Her current exhibition, Scenes of a Romantic Nature, draws on her connection to Germany by referencing the landscape paintings of German artist Caspar David Friedrich."

"“Within all of my work you’ll see nuggets of a zigzag and that represents cornrows that you see in beautiful patterns; you’ll see combs, you’ll see people that look familiar to myself and my narrative,”"

"“We need to see more female designers in the industry. There’s not enough,”"

"“Hair has been something that’s important for not only my family but a lot of African people as well; it’s really like the center of our identity in a way. So, when I started drawing, I’d draw people having really fresh haircuts or beautiful braids.”"

"“Art plays a significant role in the transformation of our country,”"

"When you start to perform a particular character for the media or historians, you get locked into them. So even when you start writing, there’s no space for your words to be published. Now that I’m an academic, I can say what I like and write what I like. When I write what I like, it’s going to be fucken dangerous."

"By constructing spaces, placing slightly discordant objects amongst seemingly natural landscapes, Poynton creates a tension within her work that is intended to make the viewer uncomfortably aware of the act of perception."

"Her work often conflates tropes from traditional art history, from compositional techniques to poses of her subjects, and the indices of contemporary life to create a sense of chaotic inscrutability; in this way, Poynton creates work which is aesthetically engaging and intellectually confounding."

"My art is underpinned by ongoing research into the impact of artists and their art making upon environment."

"Through her unique depiction of the human figure, we come to appreciate Sebidi’s representation of different forms of black being, and a search into the relationship between humanism, spiritualism and the contemporary black African condition."

"Many of these prosthetics are "traditionally" flesh colour, a kind of dirty pink. There is irony here, as flesh colour is not just a category of colour, but nothing less than a western conceit in which whiteness (pink) becomes the universal colour for flesh"

"Who cares if you can paint something that looks real? It is totally banal. There is no worth in that, except as a kind of sport, an exercise in hand-eye co-ordination. Now painting something that seems to contain reality – that is truly moving."

"Grobler' work often incorporates traditional craft techniques such as beadwork and she has collaborated with The Quebeka Bead Studio to produce beaded works."

"She has participated in close to a hundred group shows both in South Africa and abroad - in Italy, Brazil, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Australia, Spain, the United States and Finland. She attended residencies and workshops in the US, Norway, Finland and Switzerland."

""Jeanne Hoffman and Liza Grobler have collaborated on a number of projects over the past five years – all of these have been visual reactions to so-called “development” and “progress”."

"Her work resides in many notable collections including the Jeanetta Blignaut Art Consultancy Collection."

"Jill of all trades, and master of most of them... who, if she was busy, would slip a delicately beaded white chiffon dinner dress over her riding trousers and high leather boots, to arrive at a dinner party with a riding crop instead of a bag."

"self-possessed by nature and training", who "loved freedom... a slim intrepid woman, with her wide human interests, and zest for work... poised squarely in the path of life, like a bright eagle ready to fly the wind against any wrong done to the young, weak or innocent"

"an English lady who has long resided in the colony and has mingled farming with painting"

"Her range of Skullchmey exotic animal skulls of crocodile, baboon, caracul are dipped in liquid precious metals in a technique she has developed herself. Her metal embalming process leaves the exotic animal skulls in an antiqued patina finish that is already being copied by others."

"“I’m challenging the conventional thought of an African curio,”"

"Her works are designed for the high end luxury market, but also have a playful and girly charm."

"emphatically one of our national artists", with "her quaint brush and charmingly original way of looking at things"

"Her 2013 collection "Diamond Dreaming" included bracelets, necklaces and pendants inspired by the Islamic Hamsa motif as well as keys, crowns and peace signs in 9ct and 18ct white, yellow and rose gold."

"A rare incantation of both the earthly and the transcendent."

"Deeply profound visions existing as physical aesthetic gifts for other viewers."

"Equally at home in grimy alleys as she is in a studio, she creates murals that are both breathtaking and poignant. I challenge anyone to look at her work and not feel a little overawed by her talent."

"'Waste at Work combines social awareness, environmental concerns, cultural diversity and visual art in a single project that reflects the heterogeneous population of South Africa.""

"“Diamonds are so polished and precious and usually associated with jewellery. When they are set against the unevenness of the bone, it’s quite interesting,”"

"Miners are waiting for justice. Workers are waiting for a living wage. People are waiting for service delivery. Refugees are waiting for assistance. Men are waiting for jobs. We are all waiting for an honest politician. So many people are waiting for others to do things first. To take the blame. To do things for them. To take the fall. To build the country. To admit defeat. There has been so much waiting in this country that much time has been lost."

"We have become so distanced from nature, so these murals are an attempt to reconnect us with the natural world."

"There's an inherent irony in recreating nature on cement, so the series is a nostalgic reminder of what we've lost but also an attempt to reintegrate that into the present,"

"In empty buildings that felt like spiritual experiences, exploring holy chambers of neglected architecture... finding something so beautiful in what society disregards, and bringing to life that which usually people throw away or ignore."

"Her work is informed by her childhood experience growing up in Apartheid and addresses social struggles of oppressed peoples around the world. Working with gestural brush strokes and thin washes of paint, her works have a distinctly transparent appearance that emphasizes their materiality and intimate subject matter."

"“An investigation of light and shadow, of nature, our behaviors, the conscious and the subconscious, connection and dissonance, the outside world and the inside world, the phases of the moon from fullness to absence, creativity and receptivity, sound and silence. An interdependence of the two.”"