These days Matthew Krouse can usually be found in the bookshop he runs upstairs in the David Baillie Gallery at Victoria Yards in Lorentzville, Johannesburg. With his usual, self-deprecating and dry sense of humour, Krouse seems a little bemused at the fuss being made about things he did in his 20s. Back then, he was living the life of a gay drama student newly arrived in Johannesburg from the East Rand town of Germiston, where he was born to a Jewish mother and an Afrikaans father in 1961.
A recent excavation of several of the anti-authoritarian, avant-garde films he made – along with a selection of writings, illustrations and images produced during a flurry of anti-apartheid, pro-LGBTQIA+ and activist-centred artmaking in the 1980s and 1990s – has been curated and exhibited under the guidance of South Africa-born artist Adam Broomberg at Kunsthallo Gallery in London, England. The physical space has migrated online owing to the restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic.