FINE ART: James Garner
IT isn’t often in Cape Town that you get to see an exhibition devoted almost entirely to photographic works, let alone to photographs by women. Yet the success of Photo Works by Women, at the South African Association of Arts, can be put down to more than just politically-correct expediency.
Curator and co-exhibitor Lien Botha has brought together the work of 14 South African women artists, reflecting a healthy variety of methodological and conceptual frameworks.
The work of Ruth Motau will be familiar to readers of the Weekly Mail & Guardian, yet pieces such as the simply composed Man with Glasses and Man with Pipe show Motau’s range by speaking in quieter, more personal terms than the demands of news photography usually allow.
Jean Brundrit’s Volcano Series, Lynne Stuart’s Comparisons and Bronwyn Thompson’s House of Lies are intriguing for their quirky, occasionally disturbing juxtapositions, though Thompson would have done well to come up with a less starchily didactic title for her imaginatively framed collection of television-derived images.
Other highlights include Botha’s startling Africana Collectanea series. At best these meticulously composed photo-constructions come across as slightly deranged colonial fetishes, at worst as trendy magazine illustrations.
In the Artsstrip space, Billy Mandini exhibits a series of recent linocuts which display a growing lyricism and a confident command of line, pattern and shape.
Pieces such as Puppeteer and Warning are arguably among Mandini’s best work to date, executed with a vigorous discipline which seems to strengthen their playful, humorous qualities.
Photo Works by Women runs at the South African Association of Arts in Church Street, Cape Town, until September 24