Cape Town art picks: October 22 2010

Two South African veteran artists exhibit this week.

• During a career spanning almost thirty years, Barend de Wet has operated in the interface between contemporary art, material culture and social networks. A ‘dyed-in-the-wool aesthete”, as phrased by Kathryn Smith, his oeuvre has encompassed traditional media, craft skills and fanatical hobbyism. In his first major solo exhibition in more than a decade, Green, he fine-tunes these skills to explore the process of knitting as akin to a combined form of painting and sculpture. An ironic take on both the cliché of the craft-based African art and traditional art-historical conventions, de Wet’s playful practice sticks intellectual knitting needles into the heart of aesthetic constraints. As the artist puts it: ‘brei maak jou vry” (knitting sets you free).
  Stellenbosch Modern and Contemporary (SMAC), 1st Floor, De Wet Centre, Church Street, Stellenbosch. Until November 28.

• Since the mid-1960s Judith Mason has developed a practice that combines the personal and the political, aesthetics with psychoanalytic enquiry and a radical formalism with an equally radical expression of subjectivity. Her recent works on paper revisit some of her favourite themes – from hyenas to history, religion to eroticism – to provide a deft allegory for the ways by which mythologies are made. In these works social histories combine with spectral fictions to create what amounts to a deeply personal mythology. Also on show is a selection of prints from Sam Nhlengethwa’s wonderful homage to Miles Davis. Coupling a dark late night ambience, with laid back elegance, improvisation with stylised aesthetics, they present a smoky evocation to the power of jazz. Other artists showing work include Claudette Shreuders, Ditiro Makwena, Conrad Botes, Colbert Mashile and more.
  South African Print Gallery, 107 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock, Cape Town. Until October 30.