IN PICS | From a citadel to the arts to the 'Kings of Jo'burg'

Joburg is the sort of girlfriend who keeps you on your toes — cool and sophisticated one day, gritty and feisty the next.

This week, I got to experience both sides of the bustling metropolis we love to hate (and hate to love).

On Thursday evening, Africa’s economic hub unveiled a shiny new citadel to the arts; the next day, it embraced its unvarnished underbelly with the launch of a new season of a hit series centred on the supernatural saga of a fictional crime family.

Let’s start with the highbrow bit first.

Africa’s largest bank picked a spot on what’s known as the continent’s richest mile as the location for a new visual arts space — one aiming to be a conduit for novel collaborations, experimentation and a new wave of creativity.

It was a brisk winter’s evening that drew the who’s who from the worlds of arts and business — including Joburg Art Fair’s Mandla Sibeko; art patrons Mfundi and Karen Vundla; the bank’s chipper deputy chair Jacko Maree and his wife Sandy; Tshepo Mahloele (chair of pan-African investment company Harith and Arena Holdings, which owns the Sunday Times) and his wife Dolly; and US consul-general Stephanie Bunce — for the opening of the Standard Bank Art Lab at Nelson Mandela Square.

I am greeted by Standard Bank Group’s chic COO, Margaret Nienaber, whose idea it was to create the space — and who smartly turned to its JSE property portfolio, which owns the Sandton City complex, for the location (she’s a CA after all).

While I wondered whether this was yet another move by the bank to hop out of the city — as when it opened its shiny HQ in Rosebank a few years ago (as a long-time resident of the suburb, I can’t help but wonder if our regular pipe bursts have something to do with big corporates and high-rise apartments cramming into what was once Killarney’s second cousin) — Margaret assures me there are no plans to mothball its hallowed Standard Bank Gallery in the city centre.

We were the first to view the new venue’s inaugural exhibition, Follow the Blue Thread: It’s Woven Into Who We Are, which deftly nods to the bank’s wool industry roots in presenting works by acclaimed local artists — including William Kentridge, Sam Nhlengethwa, Penny Siopis and Willie Bester — displayed as enchanting mohair tapestries.

Near one such tapestry, Willie Bester’s Sunday Morning, I notice the man from Montagu — considered one of the country’s most important resistance artists — in conversation with Nhlengethwa.

Meanwhile, Sam’s work Late Night Jazz  is displayed in another part of the exhibition.

“This is my first tapestry,” explains Sam about the piece, produced in 1994 when he was awarded the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year award, propelling him to local and international fame.

Moving on to a more mainstream form of art — which, while it doesn’t appear to be the runaway global phenomenon that Cape Town-set Blood and Water has become — the television series Kings of Jo’Burg has but a huge local audience.

Produced by the late Shona Ferguson and his wife, Connie, along with American film producer Samad Davis, this drama series is a breakneck, guns-blazing ride through the City of Gold.

It provided the American subscription-based streaming service that flights it ample fuel to put on the mother of all parties to tout the arrival of its third season, which this time also features Hollywood actor Malik Yoba and veteran local actor Clint Brink.

Think guests escorted in a cavalcade of deluxe vans up a ramp into a shiny glass building opposite Sandton City, where we were welcomed by a phalanx of men and women in black (with black shades) as we headed inside, past displays of gold bullion and wads of cash.

The drinks and food flowed, and the guest list brimmed. Not only with the usual celebrity suspects, but also colourful, real-life Joburg characters, such as plastic surgeon Brian Monaisa (whose love life has become tabloid fodder); and Mmereka Patience Ntshani, the anaesthesiologist known on social media as “Dr Pashy”, who was embroiled in a real-life drama of her own when her identity documents were found in the possession of convicted rapist and murderer Thabo Bester and his girlfriend Nandipha Magudumana when they were caught in Tanzania.

On the night — hosted by Lawrence Maleka and featuring a performance by rapper Kwesta — I caught up with Clint and wife Steffi, whose baby girl, Arielle (“Her name means Lioness of God,” shares Steffi) is now two.

And I asked Connie Ferguson about her character Veronica’s new love interest in the series, played by Malik.

“What can we say?” Connie turns to Malik.

The suave Bronx-born actor, best known for his role on the American police drama New York Undercover, doesn’t skip a beat.

“You know, you have men talk about a ride-or-die woman. Well, I am her ride-or-die man,” he answered.