Jana Terblanche: Art in Focus: Series 2 | Episode 5
‘Framing African art in the world’

Art in Focus is a special edition, five-part podcast series focused on the dynamic and growing African art market, launched to coincide with ICTAF. Featured on Investec Focus Radio and Investec’s YouTube channel, the series is hosted by Tristanne Farrell, senior wealth manager at Investec Wealth & Investment International and a passionate art collector. Investec Focus Radio South Africa features conversations between leading minds from within Investec and other experts on topics that include investment, business, and broader issues.

Ahead of ICTAF 2026, Farrell spoke with art collectors, curators, investors, gallerists, and emerging artists to unpack the business of art, spotlight powerful women in the industry, explore how AI is transforming creativity, and celebrate identity and heritage across the continent.

For the final episode of series two, titled ‘Framing African art in the world’, Farrell is joined by Southern Guild director Jana Terblanche, alongside Alexander Richards (Stevenson) and Hamzeh Alfarahneh (Art Advisory). Their discussion unpacks how narrative shapes perception, value, and global positioning in African art. From curating across continents to challenging the dominant canon, the conversation explores how exhibitions, galleries and collectors influence the stories that define the art world today.

"A gallery has a voice, said Terblanche. "Southern Guild’s story is centred around the preservation of culture, ancestry, objects of resonance, and also looking at bringing marginalised voices to the fore."

WATCH / LISTEN to the full podcast via this link.

On the fair floor at Investec Cape Town Art Fair 2026 with Southern Guild Director Lindsey Raymond

Filmed on the final day of the fair, a conversation with Southern Guild Director Lindsey Raymond unfolded within the charged atmosphere of the fair floor – an environment defined as much by encounter and exchange as the diverse gallery presentations contained within it. Now in its thirteenth year, ICTAF has become a critical site of convergence, drawing together artists, curators, collectors, and institutions from across the continent and beyond, while remaining deeply embedded in the specific cultural and historical terrain of Cape Town.

The significance of presenting work within this context is layered. Cape Town is a city shaped by its geographic position at the southernmost tip of Africa, its complex political histories, and its emergence as a vital node within global contemporary art discourse. For Southern Guild, whose programme is rooted in Cape Town while increasingly extending outward through international exhibitions and institutional collaborations, including its forthcoming permanent space in Tribeca, New York, the fair represents both a moment of reflection and a platform for future trajectory.

In this sense, the fair is not simply a commercial arena, but a site of accelerated visibility, where ideas, relationships, and institutional dialogue crystallise. Raymond spoke to the delicate balance between immediacy and depth: how to maintain conceptual and emotional integrity while navigating the speed, attention, and expectation that accompany an event of this scale. Within this framework, the gallery’s triple-booth presence (across the Main, SOLO, and Generations sections) becomes more than display; it operates as a carefully composed field of relations, where individual practices enter into dialogue with one another and the broader currents shaping contemporary art today. In particular, the SOLO presentation underscores the importance of creating space for sustained engagement with a singular artistic voice. In the context of the fair’s accelerated, commercially driven environment, this focused format offers collectors and curators the opportunity to encounter an artist’s practice with greater depth and clarity, fostering a more meaningful understanding of its conceptual, material, and emotional dimensions.

Central to the discussion is the question of listening, echoing the fair’s curatorial theme this year. It emerges not only as a conceptual proposition, but as methodology: actively listening to artists and the evolution of their practices, to the cultural and historical contexts from which their work emerges, and to the shifting conditions of the global art ecosystem. It is through this sustained attentiveness that Southern Guild continues to position its artists within meaningful international conversations while remaining anchored to the specificities of place and lived experience.

Ultimately, Raymond describes ICTAF as a space where the most significant outcomes are not always immediately visible. Beyond sales and institutional placements, the fair’s lasting value lies in the relationships formed, the dialogues initiated, and the subtle perspective shifts that occur through sustained encounter. In this sense, the Investec Cape Town Art Fair operates less as a singular event than an evolving conversation – one in which Southern Guild continues to play an active and intentional role.

The full video interview will be available in the coming week. Keep an eye on our Instagram page for updates: @southernguildgallery