Group exhibitions that explore different viewpoints are on show this week.
? The Underground, the Surface and the Edges is an exhibition of video works by several artists who are interested in the workings of African cities. Central to this are the fantasies we project on to cities — opportunities, success, glamour and urbane lifestyles — and the realities — hardship, histories of exploitation, spatial improvisations and contesting economies — that help to build cities from the ground (and sometimes from the underground) up. Although the exhibition has its roots in Jo’burg, it reflects a tension familiar to Capetonians. Hopefully the insights of the predominantly Jo’burg-based artists — including Berni Searle, William Kentridge, Anthea Moys, Johan Thom, Maya Marx and Gerhard Marx, Minnette Vari, Die Antwoord and Leora Farber — will offer fresh perspectives on arguably the biggest challenge the city of Cape Town faces.
Michaelis Galleries, Hiddingh Campus, Orange Street, Gardens, until July 2.
? During the past few years the SMAC Art Gallery has staged several exhibitions that explored and revised neglected art periods and movements in South Africa’s contested history. The latest, Abstract South African Art: Revisited, focuses on Modernist Abstraction since the early 1950s. Viewed by many as one of the most important post-war developments in South African art, the movement’s history often becomes mired in apartheid divisions.
As curator Marilyn Martin wrote in 1990: ‘The mainstream in South Africa has become a camp — if the artist’s work is not figurative, Africanist or politically ‘involved’, he or she is simply moved out of it. Somehow there is no room for abstraction in this age of pluralism.” Featuring a wide range of work by artists who include Bill Ainslie, Erik Laubscher, Cecil Skotnes, Edoardo Villa, Christo Coetzee, Walter Battiss, Giuseppe Cattaneo, Sydney Kumalo, Louis Maqhubela and Ephraim Ngatane, this exhibition aims to debunk historical art cliques and clichés.
SMAC Art Gallery, 1st Floor, De Wet Centre, Church Street, Stellenbosch, until August 26.