"YOUNG BLACKMAN informed Under Projects. It was an exciting thing to see in the first year of art school. I got my head shaved in Gerald Mashona’s exhibition. In hindsight, to me it filled a space in the ecology. The hope was to be in the National Gallery by forty years old, and in the commercial galleries by thirty, but what was I supposed to do in my twenties? And here was this space. This is where you are supposed to be experimental. It was helpful to see that step, which is usually missing in the post-art school narrative."
– Mitchell Gilbert Messina 

Invited practitioners joined curator Khanya Mashabela in a roundtable conversation centred on artist-led project spaces and collaborative exhibition-making. The engagement formed part of Mashabela’s wider research project, Social, and took place in the Gallery during Common, extending the exhibition’s reflections on collective action and shared resources. Matthew Blackman and Ed Young (YOUNG BLACKMAN), Carol Khaas and Lebo Kekanna (FEDE), and Mitchell Gilbert Messina (Under Projects) contributed to the conversation.