William Kentridge: Carlton Centre Games Arcade

I spent weeks in the basement of the Carlton Centre. I was astonished at the people who spent their days in the gaming arcade using up whatever little money they had in the hope of winning a few rands. - William Kentridge

The completion of William Kentridge’s Domestic Scenes (2021) and Catalogue Raisonné Volume 1. Prints and Posters 1974–1990 (2022), both published by Steidl, was an opportunity to pause and take another more intimate look at a series of prints, singular and influential in Kentridge’s oeuvre, titled “Carlton Centre Games Arcade” (1977).

The Carlton Centre in Johannesburg, owned by the mining company Anglo American, was the most expensive and prestigious hotel and shopping complex on the African continent at the time, and was just a short walk from Kentridge’s father’s legal practice. It is then no surprise that this complex was where he decided to begin the process of observational drawing which would lead to Kentridge’s first prolonged engagement with intaglio printing.

Not only is this book an opportunity for all Kentridge enthusiasts to catch a glimpse of this never before exhibited and little-known early series of 14 etchings, but it also gives the reader a further taste of the ongoing catalogue raisonné project.