The most interesting art shows this week are to be found at the Grahamstown festival.
■ Visual art has always taken something of a backseat to dance, theatre and comedy at the National Arts Festival but this year things are different. The festival in association with Johannesburg Art Gallery presents Alan Crump: A Fearless Vision, which looks at the work of the late educator and festival committee chairman. The Albany History Museum features two important retrospective surveys: For Future Generations is a showcase of legendary Grahamstown-based ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey’s legacy to African music, and People, Prints and Process recalls the history of the Caversham Press in KwaZulu-Natal. Highlights on the contemporary side include solo exhibitions by 2011 Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art, Nandipha Mtambo, and Burundi-born, Jo’burg-based artist Serge Alain Nitegeka’s … and Walk in My Shoes. The all-new CO/MIX exhibition combines inventive comic art and sculpture. Even the Fringe is rising to the occasion with a mix of edgy student and professional exhibitions. Watch out for Finding Kaggen, an artistic search for the tokoloshe, and View from the Tower, work by the Tower Hospital mental health service users’ art group.
National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, June 30 until July 10. Go to www.nationalartsfestival.co.za for the full programme.
■ Few items of clothing are as evocative as the veil. In Berni Searle’s new video work, Interlaced, the veil becomes a central metaphor. At once the Virgin Mary, a Bruggeling (citizen of Bruges), a veiled Muslim woman and a mystic, Searle poses several questions about concealing and revealing. Can a seer see? Is the artist also a seer? Do the seers know that they see? What do we see? Do eyes see that they see?
Stevenson Gallery, Buchanan Building, 160 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock, until July 23.