Colour These Blacks White (A South African Colouring Book)
Gavin Jantjes
Artwork 1974–1975
Gavin Jantjies’ screenprint on card ‘Colour These Blacks White (A South African Colouring Book)’ consists of black and white photographs where the colours have been inverted, along with quotes and colour swatches.
Artwork: Gavin Jantjes, Colour These Blacks White (A South African Colouring Book) (1974–5). Screenprint on card. 60.2 × 45.2 cm. Courtesy of Iziko South African National Gallery.
Artist Gavin Jantjes Title Colour These Blacks White (A South African Colouring Book) Date 1974–1975 Materials Screenprint on card Dimensions 60.2 × 45.2 cm Credit Courtesy of Iziko South African National Gallery

Produced in the style of a children’s activity book, A South African Colouring Book offers readers a radically simplified view of apartheid, reducing its everyday absurdities and cruelties to instructions like “Colour this Whites Only” and “Colour this Labour Dirt Cheap”.

Images for A South African Colouring Book were sourced from the archives of the African National Congress and the International Defense and Aid Fund, and several of the photographs come directly from Ernest Cole’s seminal photobook House of Bondage, also included in the exhibition Photo book! Photo-book! Photobook! at A4.

Gavin Jantjes, who left South Africa in 1970 on a DAAD scholarship for the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg, Germany, was exiled from South Africa as a result of the publication of A South African Colouring Book (1974–1975). Shocked by his German peers’ inability to understand the reality of apartheid, the book relays information graphically and simply, as if – in Jantjes’ words – “one were explaining something to a child.” 

Installation photograph from the Photo Book! Photo-Book! Photobook! exhibition in A4’s Gallery. At the front, a freestanding display case with printed matter. At the back, a moveable gallery wall that features Peter Magubane’s photograph ‘Mine recruits humiliated by being forced to strip naked for tuberculosis examination, Witwatersrand (1968)’, Jacobsens Publishers’ book ‘Index of Objectionable Literature’, Ernest Cole’s book ‘House of Bondage’ and four screenprints from Gavin Jantjes’ ‘A South African Colouring Book’ series.
Installation photograph from the Photo Book! Photo-Book! Photobook! exhibition in A4’s Gallery. At the front, two freestanding display cases with printed matter. In the middle, a moveable gallery wall that features Peter Magubane’s photograph ‘Mine recruits humiliated by being forced to strip naked for tuberculosis examination, Witwatersrand (1968)’, Jacobsens Publishers’ book ‘Index of Objectionable Literature’, Ernest Cole’s book ‘House of Bondage’ and four screenprints from Gavin Jantjes’ ‘A South African Colouring Book’ series. On the left, shelving units with printed matter from the years 1945 to 1967 line a white wall, with Albert Newall’s oil painting ‘Harmonic Development within a Square’ mounted on a wall at the back. On the right, shelving units with printed matter from the years 1967 to 1994 line a white wall, along with David Goldblatt’s photograph ‘Climbing into kibbles at the shaft-head, the shift gets ready to go down. President Steyn No.4 shaft, Welkom, Orange Free State. 1969’.
Installation photograph from the Photo Book! Photo-Book! Photobook! exhibition in A4’s Gallery. At the front, three freestanding display cases with printed matter. On the left, a moveable gallery wall features Ernest Cole’s book ‘House of Bondage’ and four screenprints from Gavin Jantjes’ ‘A South African Colouring Book’ series. On the right, shelving units with printed matter from the years 1967 to 1994 line a white wall, along with David Goldblatt’s photograph ‘Climbing into kibbles at the shaft-head, the shift gets ready to go down. President Steyn No.4 shaft, Welkom, Orange Free State. 1969’ and Peter Magubane’s photograph ‘Give peace a chance, Soweto (1976)’.
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