Is this an artist - or a coffee pot?

Will the much garlanded South African artist William Kentridge reveal the secret to a great work? Well, it's all about a certain hot drink...

- By Dale Berning Sawa

You only have to glance at William Kentridge's family tree to realise why he is such an outsider. His maternal grandmother, Irene Geffen, was South Africa's first female barrister and his mother, Felicia Geffen, became an anti-apartheid lawyer. Then there's his father, Sydney Kentridge, the QC who represented Nelson Mandela in the 1960s and fought for justice for Steve Biko in the 70s. Studying law would have been the obvious path. "Public speaking, thinking on my feet, were natural and easy skills," said Kentridge in 1998. "Being an artist was a very unnatural and hard thing for me to do.

That's quite a statement. Because in the three decades since, Kentridge has conquered the international art world with the verve of an emerging twentysomething. He has exhibited in most major museums and biennales, and his work now fetches millions. Along the way, he has collected 10 honorary doctorates, numerous grand prizes in art and theatre, and a spot on the Time 100 list of influential people. Now, fresh from celebrating his 70th birthday in April, he has two solo exhibitions under way, two group shows, four touring operas, a touring feature-length film and a nine-part film series, Self-Portrait As a Coffee-Pot, streaming globally on Mubi "with an accompanying 836-page book". It's almost as if he was, indeed, a natural.

We meet in London, before an expansive show, titled The Pull of Gravity, is about to open at Yorkshire Sculpture Park near Wakefield. He suggests we meet at his flat opposite the British Museum. I sit at the kitchen table while he makes tea and talks about coffee pots. If you set out to do a self-portrait, he explains, you can either attempt some kind of likeness, or you can list, say, all the books you've ever read, or all the objects you own, or even just one. "In that sense," he says, "a coffee pot is as good a way of drawing oneself as drawing a picture of your face."