Indoni Arts House Gallery in Melville championing the interests of independent artists
By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor
Often visual artists struggle to get gallery representation, especially at the beginning of their career. And even when they do, they are often given a raw deal by some unscrupulous galleries when it comes to evaluating their work, and also when it comes to organising exhibitions for them.
However, if one is picked by a gallery that has the interest of the artist’s development, including connecting the artist to collectors at heart –organising and marketing exhibitions for the artist, the growth of the artist becomes seamless and meaningful. This, enables the artist to plan their career and focus on working on their craft, while the rest if taken care of by the gallery.
However, having realised such challenges in the contemporary art scene in South Africa, some artists are increasingly choosing to do things for themselves, either reaching art collectors by using digital platforms that they create, such as websites, or setting up their own galleries, where they collaborate with other artists who have the same mind set of independence and face the same challenges of seamless accessibility to the market and personal development.
One such gallery that has been set up, and where other young independent artists collaborate to put up exhibitions, is the Indoni Arts House Gallery, housed at the 27 Boxes in Melville. At the forefront of this gallery, is artist Katlego YaModimo. There is currently a group exhibition involving three artists, Katlego, Refiloe Mnisi and Funeka Shuping, which opened on Saturday, 23 May, 2026.
Each participating artist contributed individual art works, but on some works, they collaborated with each other, including the involvement of the local Melville community in some of the works as a sort of artistic experimentation.
Katlego and other artists will also at the end of May, launch another exhibition at the Roof Top Gallery, in collaboration with the Johannesburg Child Welfare, opening on May 29 running till I June, 2026, after which there will be a mini arts festival, featuring jazz artist Sicelo Mdladla as the main act, on 4 June, 2026, that will serve as the official closure of the exhibition.
“We have created the Indoni Arts House Gallery a year ago, to give an opportunity to artists to exhibit their work, given especially the challenges of gallery representation on the local art scene that, especially young artists continue to face. We also utilize the Roof Top Gallery to put up arts events, such as exhibitions, hosting art workshops and poetry performances in collaboration with Johannesburg Child Welfare and the centre,”Katlego told CITYLIFE/ARTS in an interview as he and other artists, were busy preparing the Roof Top Gallery for the next exhibition.
He continued: “I have learned the importance of independence and how an artist should represent and carry themselves for their own career development while I was at the National School of the Arts. One thing we must think about as black artists, is to note what kind of resources that are available to us in terms of money and non-monetary resources and how efficiently, we can employ such resources to empower ourselves,” Katlego said.