Young playwright Kgomotso MoMo Matsunyane and visual artist Stephanie Conradie among those to watch in 2024
The two artists last week shared the limelight with Lorin Sookool: Dance, Angel Ho: Performance art, Zoe Modiga: Music, Darren English Jazz at the presentation of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award ceremony.
By Edward Tsumele CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor
Young theatre director and actress Kgomotso MoMo Matsunyane is this year’s winner of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award. As a result many in theatre circles will next year be watching her closely to see what it is that she the young playwright will come up with as part of that prize to present at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda in the Eastern Cape. This is especially so because the playwright in recent years has clearly distinguished herself as one of the most prolific if not focussed young artist. At the award ceremony last week she made the important remark that not only she has been writing plays but also directing and in some cases producing them. Now that is a rare commitment and set of skills within the current theatre scene in South Africa.
Matsunyane was in fact among several artist awarded for their artistic efforts the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for 2023 n various categories of the arts. Held at a top restaurant in Parktown North, Johannesburg attended by VIP guests, Matsunyane shared the limelight with Lorin Sookool: Dance, Angel Ho: Performance art, Zoe Modiga: Music, Darren English Jazz, and Stephanie Conradie: Visual Art.
Among the winners one artist to look out for is Stephanie Conradie whom the organisers of this award are understandably excited about.
“Standard Bank Gallery is proud to present Stephanè Conradie – Winner of the 2023 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Arts, Stephané Edith Conradie is a lecturer in print media at Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, South Africa. She has a PhD in Visual Arts at the University of Stellenbosch, where she completed her MA in Visual Arts (Art Education) and her BA in Visual Arts (Fine Arts). Although primarily a trained printmaker, she is known for her bricolage assemblages. Her research work focuses on trying to make sense of her social and economic ‘situatedness’, in a South African context”.
Stephanè has received these accolades:
• 2023 Humanities Faculty Emerging Researcher Award, the University of Cape Town,
• 2022 15th Triennial Young Artist Award Kleinplastik Fellbach, Germany,
• 2020 Finalist, Megalo International Print Prize 2020, Kingston, Australia, and
• 2014 Swains Yard First Space Young Artist Studio Award.
Conradie is a co-founder of the Black Ink Collective, a group of printmakers and her work sits in permanent collections such as the Leridon Collection, France; Wits Art Museum Collection, UNISA Art Gallery, Spier Collection, South Africa and GAUTREAUX Collection, and Cansas P.O.C Galila Barzilaï-Hollander, Belgium. She has exhibited in New York City, Amsterdam, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Portugal, and has participated in Art Fairs in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Brussels, Paris, and Chicago.