Musa Nxumalo, the young Johannesburg photographer whose black and white photos of Soweto youth with a deep-seated love for alternative rock propelled him into the national spotlight last year, is due to show new work at Johannesburg's Afronova Gallery (September 17 – October 16).

Dylan Lewis, the Cape Town sculptor who in the 2000s achieved international acclaim for his gestural sculptures of feline predators, is currently showing a selection of his new works at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden. The exhibition, entitled Untamed, features a selection of his recent animal-human figures.

"Painting is unforgiving, instantly revealing levels of integrity, which can be veiled in other mediums," states Lisa Brice in an interview with fellow painter Godfried Donkor in the spring 2010 edition of Art South Africa.

Jodi Bieber's recent Time magazine cover shoot of Aisha, an 18-year-old Afghani woman mutilated by her in-laws, is a big conversational topic right now. Art South Africa applauds Bieber for her reportage work. It bears noting, however, that Bieber isn't the only South African photographer to shine abroad in recent weeks.

The way in which cities are seen and recorded by artists is of increasing interest to social scientists. Edgar Pieterse, director of the African Centre for Cities (ACC), an inter-disciplinary research centre based at the University of Cape Town, has made looking at art about cities integral to his enquires into urban development. Counter-Currents, a recent edited volume of the ACC's research, included many examples of how artists have interpreted Cape Town's urban sprawl.

After six years at the helm of Art South Africa, Sean O'Toole is stepping down as print magazine editor. This spring edition of the magazine, on shelves in September, will be his last.

Thank you Sean for your hard work and dedication - Suzette, Brendon and the Art South Africa team.

Marlene Dumas - Bronze MerylView larger picture Bronze Meryl, 1998 (detail), by Marlene Dumas. Photograph: copyright Marlene Dumas

Marlene Dumas is like Marmite. You either love her or you hate her. I have loved her since the 1990s, when I first encountered her paintings of nude women: transformed versions of the stock images of commercial pornography, thoroughly recognisable, unsentimental, sometimes brutal, but at the same time profoundly compassionate. These female figures have been dredged from the very edges of the world, complying perforce with their own exploitation, spreading their legs, squeezing their breasts together, looking at the viewer through bruised thighs. Dumas's way of painting them veils them, dissolves their edges as if by pooling body fluids.

THE ROLEX MENTOR AND PROTéGé ARTS INITIATIVE IS AN INTERNATIONAL PHILANTHROPIC PROGRAMME CREATED TO ASSIST EXTRAORDINARY, RISING ARTISTS TO ACHIEVE THEIR FULL POTENTIAL. IT SEEKS OUT THESE ARTISTS FROM AROUND THE WORLD AND BRINGS THEM TOGETHER WITH GREAT MASTERS, FOR A YEAR OF CREATIVE COLLABORATION IN A ONE-TO-ONE MENTORING RELATIONSHIP.

2010/2011 ROLEX MENTOR AND PROTéGé FOR THE VISUAL ARTS, ANISH KAPOOR AND NICHOLAS HLOBO!

WORKING PRIMARILY WITH RUBBER AND RIBBONS, THE PROTéGé IS EXCITED BY THE MENTOR'S USE OF A WIDE RANGE OF MATERIALS AND HIS EXPLORATION OF LIGHT AND REFLECTIONS. NICHOLAS HLOBO IS READY TO PUSH BACK THE HORIZONS OF HIS ART.

Shortly before his departure from the Johannesburg Art Gallery, chief curator Clive Kellner staged a provocative exhibition that explored the diverse threads of twentieth century avant-gardism. Here he discusses his motivations

Titus Matiyane's large-scale maps recently returned to South Africa from a tour to The Netherlands and Mali. Measuring up to 46 metres, his drawings might offer the full picture but in person the artist remains an enigma

Composer and sound artist Philip Miller has made music for films, television, multimedia and live performance. A child prodigy who defied expectations by studying law, he talks about his various collaborations, Abu Ghraib and being unclassifiable

In the winter of 2006, Cecil Skotnes' 80th year, Alexandra Dodd visited this pioneering African modernist at his home in Cape Town. Skotnes, who passed away in April, talked about being the son of a preacher man, love, bosoms, apartheid, Polly Street, the violence of war and fighting a good fight

Andries Botha's heavyweight sculpture of an elephant, a meditation on the coexistence of living things made from indigenous wood and galvanised steel, astounded Durban audiences when it was recently exhibited at the KZNSA Gallery

Michael Taylor's prolific creative output, which spans a variety of media, is characterised by the assured hand of a skilled draughtsman. By Milia Lorraine Khoury

Dineo Bopape is one of 50 artists, and the only South African, to be included in the New Museum's global survey of emerging artists, drolly titled Younger than Jesus. By Gideon Unkeless

Siemon Allen is a compulsive collector and archivist of South African ephemera. Displayed as large-scale visual and informational installations, Allen's self-described "collection projects" explore, amongst other things, the concept of identity-formation through displacement

The artist collective AfriCOBRA traces its history back to late 1960s Chicago, a time of social change and political upheaval. The ambitions of this loose association of artists was simple: to explore, develop, and perpetuate an approach to image making which would reflect and project the moods, attitudes, and sensibilities of African Americans independent of the aesthetic strictures of Eurocentric modalities

In his reading of select work by Samuel Fosso, Aimé Ntakiyica and Yinka Shonibare, Anthony Downey argues that the game of identity can be both played and yet simultaneously enlisted to question the demands of identity formation and the cultural politics surrounding it

Adjectives and nouns constrain, so let's just agree that Colin Richards is Colin Richards. But still. In a welcome about- face, this vital theoretician, ranging art scholar and meticulous artist becomes the subject of words

Citizens of the East African state of Eritrea need a pass and a fixed reason to travel within their own country. Eritrean expatriate Dawit L. Petros tells Nadine Rubin how his 'othereness' allowed him mobility to create his new work