Cape art pick: September 30 2011

Two new exhibitions deal with environmentalism’s ambiguous position in South Africa.

■ Michaelis senior lecturer Virginia MacKenny curates Threshold, an exhibition that engages environmental change through the radical remaking of traditional genres such as landscape and flower painting.

Major South African artists such as Thomas Mulcaire, Jeremy Wafer, Lucas Thobejane and Lien Botha join a younger generation of emerging artists. Also on show is A Conversation with Bolus: Science, sensibility, sensuality, curated by Nadja Daehnke. Harry Bolus (1834 - 1911) was an amateur botanist who devoted much of his life to finding, classifying and cataloguing the flora of the Western Cape.

Michaelis Galleries, University of Cape Town’s Hiddingh Campus, until October 19. Tel: 021 4807170. Website: www.gipca.uct.ac.za.

■ Since its inception 25 years ago in a once-derelict Wesleyan Methodist chapel in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, the Caversham Centre has been recognised as one of South Africa’s premier print studios. To celebrate this legacy, the studio has assembled an exhibition of original graphics from established and lesser-known artists under the title Hats Off!

South African Print Gallery, 107 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock, until October 6. Tel: 021 462 6851. Website: www.printgallery.co.za.