In a bold and immersive return to the global spotlight, internationally acclaimed South African artist William Kentridge has unveiled his most significant UK exhibition to date at the prestigious Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP). Titled simply William Kentridge, this powerful new showcase marks the largest presentation of his sculptural work on British soil — and once again reminds the world why Kentridge is considered one of the most original visual storytellers of our time.
Running alongside the exhibition is the debut of his deeply personal and whimsical nine-part film series, Self‑Portrait As a Coffee‑Pot, a project that opens a rare window into the inner workings of the artist’s mind. Together, the two works create a dialogue — one that blurs the lines between political commentary, personal narrative, and artistic reflection.
This is more than an exhibition. It’s a meditation on the creative process itself.
Kentridge’s Yorkshire Takeover: Art as a Living Conversation
Spanning indoor galleries and open-air landscapes at YSP, the exhibition features dozens of bronze sculptures, kinetic objects, mechanised drawings, and performative installations — each piece layered with historical allusion, dry wit, and philosophical depth.
Best known for his charcoal animations and stage productions, Kentridge here showcases the often-overlooked materiality of his practice. The works range from fragmented human forms and puppet-like contraptions to political relics reimagined — sculptures that appear simultaneously ancient and prophetic.
Each sculpture, in Kentridge’s hands, becomes a thinking machine — not static object, but a commentary in motion.
YSP’s rolling Yorkshire hills provide an evocative setting for Kentridge’s uniquely African surrealism. Set against pastoral English backdrops, the works seem to question what “history” really means when it crosses borders, bodies, and colonial legacies.
Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot: The Artist Disarmed
If the sculpture exhibition is a public stage, then Self‑Portrait As a Coffee‑Pot is the artist’s whisper — intimate, absurd, and disarmingly profound.
Filmed in his Johannesburg studio, this nine-part series features Kentridge engaging in conversations with himself (sometimes as a coffee pot, other times as a smudge, a brush, or a philosophical doodle). The result is a genre-defying exploration of selfhood, process, doubt, and the absurd rituals of creation.
It is part lecture, part daydream, and part animated diary — and yet, it captures something rarely seen: the private fragility and obsessive humour that fuels an artist of Kentridge’s calibre.
In one episode, a drawing turns into a self-critical monologue. In another, a pot of ink becomes a symbol for everything unknowable. All of it unfolds with the charm and gravity that only Kentridge can deliver — a masterclass in turning introspection into art.
An African Voice in the Global Canon
Kentridge’s presence on the global art stage continues to be both necessary and disruptive. A white South African born during apartheid, his work consistently interrogates systems of oppression, the complexity of identity, and the role of memory in both trauma and recovery.
Yet Kentridge never offers easy answers. His genius lies in refusing neat binaries. He is playful and political, poetic and cynical, intimate and epic — often all at once.
In an art world that too often sidelines African perspectives or seeks them only through pain, Kentridge’s work insists on nuance, contradiction, and the right to be complex.
