Outsider Art: A Globetrotter’s Guide
SOUTH AFRICA | NIEU-BETHESDA: The dusty road bends into a blue bowl of hills. Suddenly, in a hollow lined in yellowing poplar trees and willows, the geese have the right of way. Complete with white roses in the churchyard, Nieu Bethesda is a little piece of England hewn from the badlands of the Karoo. This once-obscure backwater is home to the Owl House, South Africa’s premier example of Outsider Art – art created by driven individuals, outside of the mainstream, untrained and untainted by cultural expectations who are compelled to express their intense personal vision with whatever comes to hand. Miss Helen chose crushed glass and concrete. (Unpublished)
Pineapples and Prima Donnas: South Africa’s National Arts Festival
SOUTH AFRICA | GRAHAMSTOWN: The historic South African town of Grahamstown was founded as a British fort in 1820 during the fierce frontier wars with the Xhosa tribes in what is now the Eastern Cape. Today, Grahamstown’s (Makhanda) place on the map is assured by two things: Rhodes University and the Standard Bank National Festival of the Arts held every year in July. (‘Indwe’ Inflight: SA Express Airways)
Going Out in Style: The Coffin-makers of Ghana
GHANA: The Ga make up 8% of Ghana’s population. Most are to be found around the city they founded, today’s capital, Accra. Their burial rituals are a colourful blend of Christian and traditional beliefs. Like the Egyptians of old, the dead are buried with jewellery, money and hand-woven cloth. Their coffins tell the story of their lives. (Publication: ‘Africa Environment and Wildlife’)
Worlds Apart: Taiwan’s Forgotten People
TAIWAIN | LER YE: Guidebooks unanimously proclaim Taiwan a ‘bastion of Chinese culture’. The Chinese, however, were not the island’s first inhabitants. Up in the mountains, as remote from the twenty-first century as they are from the hubbub of urban life, live a people whose ancestors saw the first wave of colonial settlement. (Publication: ‘New Expatriate’; Image: © Luo Jikun)