FNB Art Joburg attracts a huge crowd on opening day at the Sandton Convention Centre

Talking about emerging artists, this year’s winner of FNB Art Joburg Art Prize, Kelebogile Marope from Botswana, seems to be riding nicely the storm around her winning art works, paintings of iron pieces, that some suggest are too close for comfort to the style of top rated South African artist Usha Seejarim.

By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor

The event resembled at arts festival. A huge crowd both young and old, collector and none collector, art connoisseur and art ignoramus. The distinction did not really matter as all came with one purpose. Attending the FNB Art Joburg. This event has become increasingly a place to be seen and see, and for those with deep pockets, to buy quality art from top contemporary artists from the continent.

Both emerging artists whose future is sealed by being included by their respective country’s galleries’participation in this art fest this year, as well as seasoned artists at the top of their career, the FNB Art Joburg has indeed morphed into a prestigious art market since it started. Maybe even an arts festival, judging by the number of people who turned up and the atmosphere in the venue. Encouragingly including the young and happening crowd, who granted, did not seem for a moment, not to realise that this is a place for buying art, and not just to be seen and see.

It however perhaps does not matter as the people who to FNB Art Joburg today, for other reasons other than buying art, are tomorrow’s potential art collectors. Actually, you cannot like or dislike something that you are not exposed to. Serious art collectors who go to the art fair simply have to be patient with the young and happening crowd, who seemed to be more fashion conscious than art conscious as they moved around the exhibition hall at Sandton Convention Centre, talking loud, energetic and simply happy to be rubbing shoulders with artists and real collectors.

I remember a word of caution I got from a well-known art dealer last year, when I expressed the view to him that the FNB Art Joburg Fair these days seems to attract a young crowd that seems to be more interested in hanging out and connecting than buying art.

“Actually, it is good this way. The art needs such a crowd, especially on opening day as it gives the event a certain energy, that is actually necessary,” he counselled.

Of course, this is not the crowd that one will see at normal gallery exhibition openings in Johannesburg or Cape Town, for example. For them, it is perhaps the question of who needs to attend an exhibition opening at one gallery, when you can see lots of gallery exhibition openings under one roof, including galleries from the rest of the African continent. For that is essentially FNB Art Fair has become.

Thursday was the opening of what is definitely the biggest art event this weekend, running from Thursday till Sunday, 6 September 2026. This is an event you seriously need to consider going to if you are interested in either investing in art or simply learning contemporary art trends of the continent, such as who is worth investing in their art for future earnings, and who is the hottest artist from the continent worth collecting as an emerging artist.

Talking about emerging artists, this year’s winner of FNB Art Joburg Art Prize,Kelebogile Marope from Botswana, seems to be riding nicely the storm around her winning art works, paintings of iron pieces, that some suggest are too close for comfort to the style of top rated South African artist Usha Seejarim. Some are even suggesting that this is a case of pure plagiarism. This obliviously raises a number of questions, such as can you be accused of plagiarism when you are influenced by a senior artist’s style and you style your practice around them. Creating work that inevitably resembles the senior artist’s stylistically, and yet the work is still your original work.

Maybe the question should be, is any work of creation original, original. Are we not influenced stylistically by others who have come before us, whose style we admire? Whether it is writing style, or painting style, somewhere somehow, we as humans, tend to be influenced and imitate those who have come before us. We style our practice consciously or subconsciously around them, till we find our own language as we grow.

Me just thinking aloud anyway.
The complaining crowd should perhaps leave Marope be. As she continues to perfect her art practice, she will inevitably find her own distinct visual voice within the broad influence of Seejarim’s practice.

Controversy or no controversy, when CITYLIFE/ARTS visited the Botswana Gallery’s space at the fair representing Marope, we found the Rhodes University MFA graduate in high spirits, seemingly oblivious to the raging controversy surrounding her winning entries to the FNB Art Joburg Prize.

The fact that many visitors to the fair converged around her art works on display, including the iron pieces at the centre of controversy, must have given the young artist a moral boostin the face of these accusations of plagiarism. The crowd simply loved her art pieces as they took turns taking pictures next to Marope’s works, particularly the iron pieces at the centre of this controversy.

.The FNB Art Joburg is on at the Sandton Convention Centre till Sunday, September 6, 2026.