Accounts and Drawings from Underground: The East Rand Proprietary Mines Cash Book

Accounts and Drawings from Underground is a 2015 book by William Kentridge and Rosalind C. Morris that reimagines pages from the 1906 Cash Book of the East Rand Proprietary Mines Corporation in South Africa. Kentridge's landscape drawings respond to the mining terrain, while Morris' narrative account is generated from the text. The book explores the exploitation of African communities and sheds light on global Black history, with a revised edition featuring fifteen new color drawings by Kentridge.

Format: Hardback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 14 January 2022
Publisher: Seagull Books London Ltd

In 2015, renowned artist William Kentridge and scholar Rosalind C. Morris collaborated on an extraordinary project titled Accounts and Drawings from Underground. This groundbreaking work involved transforming pages from the 1906 Cash Book of the East Rand Proprietary Mines Corporation in South Africa into a wholly new artistic experience. Kentridge's breathtaking landscape drawings responded to the transient terrain mining that had shaped the area, while Morris delved into the text of the cash book to craft a unique narrative account.

Now, Kentridge and Morris return to these abandoned mines, accompanied by a visual and verbal addendum that offers a captivating account of the ongoing metamorphosis of the world that gold mines had created. Kentridge operates at the intersection of the visible and the invisible, while Morris unearths the unsaid to make it accessible. Together, they have produced a landmark book that chronicles the exploitation of African communities and sheds valuable light on global Black history.

This revised edition of Accounts and Drawings from Underground features fifteen stunning new color drawings by Kentridge, along with an additional coda. It continues its remarkable documentation of the stories of migrant laborers and the flows of capital and desire, providing readers with a palpable sense of a vanished world. Through their collaborative efforts, Kentridge and Morris have created a masterpiece that showcases the power of art to illuminate the past and shed light on the present.

Weight: 1468g
Dimension: 250 x 339 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780857428523
Edition number: Revised