FLIPSIDE, the inadvertent archive

419pp., b/w & colour illus., paperback, Johannesburg, 2024

Kim Gurney responds to the Association for Visual Arts (AVA) archive. The uncatalogued archival collection, spanning more than five decades, holds an array of documents, from exhibition information and correspondence to meeting minutes and financial records.

The AVA has been located in an old house, Richter Huis, in Cape Town City Centre since 1971.

Includes the essay, "Ghosts and Gems. The AVA belongs to no-one and to everyone" by Mirjam Asmal.

"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 speak 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

Writer, researcher, visual artist and former journalist Kim Gurney is based at the Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape and lives in Cape Town. She is the author of Panya Routes: Independent art spaces in Africa; August House is Dead, Long Live August House! The story of a Johannesburg atelier and The Art of Public Space: Curating and re-imagining the ephemeral city.