Cape art pick: May 6 2011

Street artists have always set themselves up in contrast to the intellectual interventions of contemporary artists.

• Combining creativity with protest, and insisting that art should be more than the icing on the cake for the super-rich, their aim is generally to connect with the real world, rather than work for the market. So does street art have any place in the gallery space? This question is at the heart of Kilmany-Jo Liversage aka Orda’s new exhibition Moniker. Deliberately emphasizing the tension, and the obvious formal differences, between the two centres of cultural expression, it features portraits of well-known street artists. Kilmany-Jo’s uses aerosol sprays to capture the edgy, energetic spirit of her subjects in create a body of large, colourful paintings.

  Worldart Gallery, 54 Church Street, Cape Town. Opens May 7 at 9am until May 29.

• In Kafka’s enigmatic parable, Before the Law, a man from the country sits before a gate waiting for permission to ‘gain admittance” to the law. Since he is never granted permission, he never enters, though he waits for years—his entire life. He is about to die when the doorkeeper tells him, ‘This gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.” It’s this world of the law that Elgin Rust investigates in his appropriately maddening named exhibition, JUDGEMENT, UITSPRAAK 2011 CASE NO. 001/05/2008. A collaborative group, it questions the distinctions between plaintive and accuser, justice and injustice, guilt and innocence in a system rife with bureaucracy and prejudices. Participating artists include Paul Birchall, Kitty Dörje, Claire Jorgensen, Dave Robertson, Max Wolpe, Ian Grose, Gretchen Van der Byl, Cara van der Westhuizen, Natasha Norman, Sonja Rademeyer, Isabelle Grobler, Bridget Baker, Dale Washkansky and Nina Liebenberg.
  
  Association For Visual Arts, 35 Church Street, Cape Town. Until May 13.