Kim is a former journalist whose work has morphed into long-form reportage and book projects. She has over 15 years of writing and editing experience across a broad range of genres and publishing platforms. This versatility recently spans digital storymaps, an artist book, a photobook, a creative non-fiction book, a visual essay, book chapters, and media articles.
Kim is the author of four non-fiction books and is working on a fifth book project, working title ‘Flotsam’. A lot of her work is in print but some digital samples reflecting this range are listed below.
Prior journalism roles include News Editor at a Financial Times Business weekly in London, managing a bespoke online news service at the same group, a stringer for Newsweek International’s Africa bureau, and News Editor of Art South Africa. Two of her four degrees are in Journalism - a B.Journ from Rhodes University (awarded with Distinction) and an MA in International Journalism from City St George’s, University of London.
*Gurney, K. 2022. After the fall: An Art of the Commons. In: Shuddhashar, Issue 27, February 1.
*Gurney, K. 2021. The mogul, his meerkat and the meerkat’s second life. In: e-flux Architecture. ‘Workplace’, a collaboration between between e-flux Architecture and the Canadian Centre for Architecture within the context of its year-long research project Catching Up With Life. Edited by Nick Axel, Albert Ferré, Nikolaus Hirsch, Megan Marin.
*Gurney, K. 2021. DIY institutions, artistic thinking and common space, Barcelona: CCCB.
*Gurney, K. 2021. Kicking Dust: Communal pathways as works of art,In Review, Editor: Keely Shinners.
*Gurney, K. 2020. Green Screen - A digital storymap of creative nonfiction that follows the life of a film set assembled for a commercial to tell a larger story about counterfactual imagination and city futures from the artisanal perspective of the workshop floor.
*Gurney, K. 2020. The second lives of zombie monuments. In: Africasacountry. This article is about the performative afterlife of the voided plinth of the toppled statue of Cecil Rhodes.
*Gurney, K. 2020. Artists help us leap into the unknown. In: Africasacountry. An article about how artists navigate uncertainty.
Gurney, K. 2019. From End to End. A Storymap of Viral Sculptures. This digital storymap (geolocation, visuals and text) follows the surprising trajectories of a series of star-shaped sculptures from a Johannesburg studio into private and public settings as part of a broader study on art as a vector of value.
*Gurney, K. November 2015. Re-imagining Africa’s Cities. In: Ogojiii, Issue 03, Nairobi and Johannesburg: Ogojiii, pp. 43-49.
*Gurney, K. December 2015. Performing the Present: The Second Life of Zombie Monuments. In: Art Africa, Issue 02, Cape Town: Bell-Roberts, pp. 14-17.
*Gurney, K. with photographer Sydelle Willow Smith. February 2015. The Doppelgangers In: Cityscapes, Issue 6. This feature on Hasan and Husain Essop, successful fine art photographers and twins who collaborate in their professional practice, shows the close imbrications in their work between space, personal identity, politics, and imagination in a city where spatial inequality is still a reality. The article was written for an ACC exhibition about Cape Town, City Desired.
*Gurney, K. with photographer Sydelle Willow Smith. February 2015. The Conservationist. In: Cityscapes, Issue 6. This long-form nonfiction piece profiles Luzann Isaacs, who manages an ecologically sensitive urban wetland park in a most unlikely setting - surrounded by industria, a township, and a freeway, and notorious for neighbouring Cape Flats ganglands. Most strikingly, it has no fence and must negotiate its presence with dialogue and reciprocity justifying its value and indigenous knowledges. This article formed part of a series for a multimedia exhibition by ACC on Cape Town, City Desired. In: Cityscapes, Issue 6.
*Gurney, K. with photographer David Harrison. 2014. Edge Design - Urban form and social change in Khayelitsha and Dunoon, reflected upon through the issue of sanitation. In: Cityscapes. Issue No. 5, pp. 34-49. This issue asks whether design can save the city; the article posits that people in fast-changing cities are already doing so in innovative ways.
Gurney, K. 2013. ‘Sounding the City: Urban Performance in Johannesburg’ In: Kunstforum International, Issue 223 (Oct-Dec): 94-107 - in German
*Gurney, K, with photographer Delwyn Verasamy. Winter 2012. A Visionary Statement, reportage on the contested notion of Johannesburg as a ‘world class city’, a behind-the-scenes take on where such notions come from and what they might mean. In: Cityscapes, Issue 2, pp. 56-71.
*Gurney, K. 15 January 2012. Muted Tones: the evolving life of distressed musical instruments. This article takes inspiration from damaged musical instruments, largely pianos, reconfigured into surprising and unforeseen second lives. In: CCTV, a zine for local ideas in global practice. Vol 1. no. 1 Launch Issue, August 2012. Rangoato Hlasane (curator): Johannesburg. Download. Originally published as Life of a Piano in Sunday Independent.
*Gurney, K. 2012. The Fractured Public Interest. In: Rhodes Journalism Review, Issue 32, p.8.
*Gurney, Kim, with Scott Johnson. Digging up the Dirt. Investigative news feature on the search for South Africa’s politically ‘disappeared’ - Newsweek International.
*Gurney, K. September 2011. The shifting private-public axis. In: Rhodes Journalism Review, No. 31.
*Gurney, K. Sep 2006. James Webb: Take nothing for granted. In: Business Day Art Supplement, p.14.
*Gurney, K. Sep 2006. Peter Clarke: The poetry and music of everyday. In: Business Day Art Supplement, p.13.
The graffiti shadow of the toppled statue of Cecil John Rhodes at UCT campus. Its performative afterlife is the subject of an ongoing research project, reflected in various articles above. A visual essay and accompanying text is also published in ‘Panya Routes’ (2022), titled ‘Common space: After the Fall’. Photo: Kim Gurney
Book corner
Flipside: The Inadvertent Archive. Lagos & Johannesburg: iwalewabooks (2024)
This book takes the reader on a thematic journey through the rooms of a former house in Cape Town that Association for Visual Arts (AVA) has, since 1971, called home. The architectural records which inspire this narrative structure are lodged in the AVA Archive, comprising a vast array of physical documents of care, to which ‘Flipside’ creatively responds. This collection spans apartheid and South Africa’s democratic era, coinciding with AVA’s own redirection as an autonomous organisation in 1995, to tell a larger sociopolitical tale. Gurney follows the trail of ‘inadvertent archive’ – unexpected or fugitive artefacts that startle, diverge, or surprise, to see where they might lead. In so doing, ‘Flipside’ surfaces the invisible custodial labour in AVA’s double act of exhibition making (as a nonprofit gallery) and institution building (as an association) - from the backroom perspective. Her narrative, interrupted by voices from the stacks, deliberately links space and (re)imagination to reject structural discontinuities and show how interlinked things truly are.
“A journey into an institutional archive is in many ways a confrontation with the making of the establishment itself. Kim Gurney’s Flipside is a close and deep dive into the plurality of the AVA archives, which speaks directly to the active history of ‘instituting’, and the many shapes and forms it has taken in parallel to the political history of art institutions in South Africa more generally.” Huda Tayob (Architectural Studies, University of Manchester).
Launch event held on 9 March 2024 @ AVA Gallery - the author in conversation with Prof Premesh Lalu (UWC). Audio available
Physical and ebook available internationally from iwalewabooks
Physical book available from any independent bookstores in South Africa, and direct from AVA Gallery
The ebook is open access for researchers - please contact author
Panya Routes: Independent art spaces in Africa. Berlin & Lausanne: Motto Books (2022)
‘Panya Routes’ is the result of a four-year research project, Platform/ Plotform, to investigate the working principles of pan-African independent art spaces by correlating curatorial strategies with everyday urban innovations. It spans five fast-changing cities: Nairobi (GoDown Arts Centre), Accra (ANO), Cairo (Townhouse), Addis Ababa (Zoma Museum) and Dar es Salaamn (Nafasi art space). In short, the book is about DIY-DIT institution building as artistic practice, or ‘doing things with art’. It considers how independent spaces deal with uncertainty and flux, and what others can glean from long-standing platforms that are built for purpose not profit. It also reflects upon how these platforms act as urban indicators and as vectors of futures thinking. For researchers, there is a section on method and a collation of some allied texts on the subject matter. The book includes maps designed by Bella Knemeyer that situate these spaces in their urban context, some fieldwork visuals by the author, and a visual essay. The graphic design of the book is by Márcia Novais and it is edited by Mika Hayashi Ebbesen.
“This beautifully crafted book represents a new generation of scholarship, bringing together the fields of urban studies and art history. While cities and urbanization are themselves formal manifestations of the intersections across economy, politics and aesthetics that define modern life, the role of creative practice as a form of sociality is under theorized. Kim Gurney explores that role in the making of new urban societies in the Global South. She shows how Panya Routes or ‘backroad infrastructures’ that define Southern cities are neither temporary nor epiphenomenal but rather major forms for the formation of collective solidarities. A much-needed volume, it explores the emergence of new institutions as themselves a genre of art. This book is a tour de force of creative research and writing and should inform and serve the next generation of urban scholars with a new vision of how contemporary forms of art making and creative performance have become an integral part of the infrastructure of social and political life in the twenty-first century.” - Vyjayanthi Rao, Senior Editor of the journal Public Culture, and Visiting Professor at Yale School of Architecture
“In an engaging analysis of five African independent art spaces, Kim Gurney convincingly highlights the powerful artistic and political potential of such autonomous art initiatives: to formulate novel propositions that creatively engage with the continent’s varied social realities; to redesign its material realities; to innovate the contents of what constitutes its public spheres; and to generate imaginings of alternative futures that bypass the tired discourses and practices of institutionalized political levels in order to embrace more inclusive and collective modes of living together. ‘Panya Routes’ is an original, hopeful and timely reflection on the role of public art to rethink urban worlds in Africa and beyond.” - Filip De Boeck, co-author of ‘Suturing the City. Living Together in Congo’s Urban Worlds’
The Cape Town launch was hosted at A4 Arts Foundation on 11 August 2022, the author in conversation with Neo Muyanga. Audio recording. The Johannesburg launch was hosted at Stokvel Gallery on 22 October 2022, with Mokena Makeka as speaker. Audio recording.
Available internationally via Motto Books and Amazon.com. In South Africa only, Karavan Press is a local distribution partner for all independent bookstores. Also at proto~ (A4 Arts), Clarke’s Books, Book Lounge.
Photo by Jonx Pillemer, courtesy of A4 Arts Foundation
Launch of Panya RoutesPhoto by Jonx Pillemer, courtesy of A4 Arts Foundation
Neo Muyanga & Kim GurneyPhoto by Jonx Pillemer, courtesy of A4 Arts Foundation
Launch of Panya RoutesPhoto by Jonx Pillemer, courtesy of A4 Arts Foundation
August House is Dead, Long Live August House! The Story of a Johannesburg Atelier. Johannesburg: Fourthwall Books (2017)
This creative nonfiction book about Johannesburg tells the story of an innercity building during a time of transition. August House, a former textiles factory (b. 1946), functioned for a decade as an atelier but at time of writing had just been put up for sale and all its tenants had to relocate. The narrative is woven by following various artworks made in the building’s midst during this time of uncertainty and change, and their imbrication with a host of the building’s residents. It is a narrative of beginnings, endings and never-endings - a series of micro stories that tell a macro tale about what was ‘august’ about August House - or why art matters, and the seismographic role it plays in an ever-changing city like Johannesburg. Book launch flier pdf
The Johannesburg launch took place on Wednesday 27 September 2017 @ 18h00, Point of Order project space, Jan Smuts Avenue, Braamfontein. Audio recording of all speeches. Speakers: Terry Kurgan (Fourthwall), Edgar Pieterse (Director: ACC), Graeme Gotz (Research Director: Gauteng City-Region Observatory) and key respondent Caroline Wanjiku-Kihato (academic & writer). The Cape Town launch took place on Friday 6 October 2017 @ 18h00, A4 Arts Foundation, Buitenkant Street, CBD. Audio recording. Speakers: Terry Kurgan (Fourthwall), Premesh Lalu (UWC), Edgar Pieterse (ACC).
The book is available from The Book Lounge, Love Books, or any South African independent bookstores, via Karavan Press.
Mbongeni Buthelezi in his August House studioPhoto: Anthea Pokroy
Gordon Froud in his August House studioPhoto: Anthea Pokroy
Gibson Khumalo at his August House officePhoto: Anthea Pokroy
Power Mazibuko at August HousePhoto: Anthea Pokroy
Jacki McInnes in her August House studioPhoto: Anthea Pokroy
Bie Venter in her August House loftPhoto: Anthea Pokroy
‘The Art of Public Space: Curating and Re-imagining the Ephemeral City’. London: Palgrave Macmillan (2015)
This monograph follows the manifestation of a trilogy of performative interventions in Johannesburg during 2012 that variously explored public space - called ’New Imaginaries’. Shoe Shop was about walking the city and ambulatory thinking; Amaze.Interact involved gaming and ideas around playing the city; and Spines leveraged urban transport lines with two parallel performance art projects: United African Utopias took participants on a fantastical walk through the city with a narrative script via pirate radio and costumed guides, while In House Project activated domestic and hybrid spaces of enclosure as common grounds of potential encounter. The book reflects upon this Johannesburg-based project and situates it in a broader public sphere, towards an art of the commons.
*Preview feature by Michael Morris about ‘The Art of Public Space’ published in the Weekend Argus (21 June 2015)
*Review published by London School of Economics’ Kate Dawson (May 2016)
YouTube link to a short documentary commissioned by Goethe Institut on New Imaginaries, the project trilogy the book focuses upon.
*The Johannesburg launch took place on Wednesday 19 August 2015 at WiSER, Wits University, 18h00 with key respondent Prof. Achille Mbembe, writer, researcher and urbanist Tanya Zack, VANSA director Molemo Moiloa, moderated and introduced by Prof Edgar Pieterse. Details online at WiSER.
*Audio file of Edgar Pieterse, introduction - download here
*Audio file of Achille Mbembe, respondent - download here
*Audio file of Tanya Zack, respondent - download here
*The book is available internationally from Palgrave, Amazon, and Nook. It is available from Palgrave as a physical book or an e-book, and in separate digital chapters.
*Chapters in Abstract form: Download.
