Artthrob. By M Blackman: The Department of Arts and Culture (DAC) has stated that ‘we have no reason to doubt the professionalism of the audit company’ who audited South Africa’s R10-million participation at the 2011 Venice Biennale art exhibition. This is despite the fact that the department has been made aware that at least two of the invoices in the audit were allegedly faked.This was discovered after ArtThrob gained access to the audit via the Promotion of Access to Information Act and uncovered that a chain of apparently faked invoices and dubious sub contracts were generated in accounting for the taxpayers’ R10 million entrusted to Johannesburg gallerist Monno Mokoena to mount South Africa’s official entry in the prestigious international culture festival. More

BD Live: By John Harvey:THE world’s leading site-specific artists will descend on Plettenberg Bay from August 10-17 for the second International Land Art Biennale — an award-winning initiative that affords artists the opportunity to express their creativity on nature’s "canvas".Although relatively unknown to many South Africans, site-specific art is artwork created to exist in a certain place, and was first used in the mid-1970s by young foreign sculptors such as Patricia Johanson, Dennis Oppenheim and Athena Tacha, who produced public commissions for large urban sites.
Utilising natural backdrops and surroundings, the artists set about manipulating objects in creative ways to provide an entirely different perspective on a particular environment. More

Veteraan-omroeper, -kunstenaar en -aktrise sterf op 89
Die veteraan-omroeper, -kunstenaar en -aktrise, Joubero Malherbe, is Dinsdag in die ouderdom van 89 in Pretoria oorlede, berig RSG. Malherbe het as aktrise saam met verskeie groot name, soos Anna Neethling-Pohl, in die kunswêreld gewerk, maar word veral onthou as komponis, liriekskrywer, musiekkenner, dosent en radiopersoonlikheid.Malherbe was as omroeper en resensent oor ’n tydperk van 40 jaar werksaam by die SAUK se Radio Suid-Afrika, die Afrikaanse Diens en later ook RSG.
Sy was die aanbieder van radio-programme soos Musiekposbus, Munte uit note en die kinderprogram Vanwaar Gehasie?. More

A portrait of Damien Hirst by Jonathan Yeo will be go on display later this year at the National Portrait Gallery..
The sinister portrait shows Hirst looking directly at the viewer, dressed in a chemical dry suit and holding a mask, which he wears to make his formaldehyde works. Yeo and Hirst, who have wildly different artistic backgrounds, worked together to choose the latter's controversial attire.Yeo, who is best known for his painted portraits of Tony Blair and a pregnant Sienna Miller, said the outfit and composition were intentionally obscure. More

The renowned performance artist has bared all in an 'Ask me anything' online chat, from her baking soda baths to why she never wanted kids – and the secret of her eternal youth
Marina Abramovic abolishes all boundaries between art and life. In the 1970s she pioneered "performance art", but the reason I have put that well-worn term into inverted commas is that it is too narrow a description of her, even if it's one she chooses. The exciting thing about Abramovic is that she makes art into life and life into art. This was made very apparent when she went on Reddit this week to converse with her fans in an "Ask me anything" session. Her love life, her money life, her age (and whether she comes from a long line of vampires from Montenegro) – the questions covered all these, and Abramovic gave disarming answers. More

I have always been impressed with how awful a painter Paul Cézanne was when he was young. The fact that he started out so dreadful allowed him to be who he became. Without the facility to plausibly adopt the conventions of the Academy or recent innovations of the Impressionists Cézanne had to go his own way. No group could long tolerate him or his work, and temperamentally cranky and solitary, he couldn't stay long with one. His friend and champion Emile Bernard said that Cézanne "submerged his painting in ignorance and his mind in shadows." His detractors said worse. More