Sue Williamson – retrospective exhibition entitled “There is something I must tell you” – opens at Iziko South African National Gallery on 22 February, propitiously during the Investec Cape Town Art Fair.
This will represent the first retrospective by this iconic artist who, over five decades, has made a major impact on the local and international art world.
Williamson’s work traverses a wide range of media, from printmaking, drawing, and embroidery to photography, installation and video. Her 1980s series of etched and screen printed portraits, A Few South Africans, is frequently cited as one of the most important bodies of work to emerge from the era of apartheid and portrays women comrades and other leaders of the struggle for liberation in a way that pays homage and shows respect to their contribution in making South Africa free. Postcards made from the series were distributed not only across South Africa, but world wide.
Giving fresh consideration to earlier issues is a key aspect of Williamson’s practice. Addressing the question of how the violence of the apartheid years affected the generation who have grown up in a free South Africa, There’s something I must tell you (2013) is a six channel video installation which puts the veteran grandmothers of the struggle generation in conversation with their born free granddaughters.
In 1981, as part of her efforts to raise public consciousness around the government demolition of District Six, a vibrant, mixed race area close to the centre of Cape Town, Williamson presented The Last Supper in the Gowlett Gallery in Cape Town. Materials gathered directly from the demolition sites were heaped in the centre of the gallery and surrounded by six dining room chairs borrowed from a District Six friend. An audio tape played. For the retrospective, Iziko has commissioned a new installation which will re-visit and re-imagine this seminal, but long since destroyed, work Borrowed from the family once again for the occasion, the same six chairs will form the centre of the new work.
As an activist during apartheid, Williamson made posters and T-shirts that critiqued the racist policies of the day. A photograph of her now-famous “Freedom Charter” T-shirt was seen in the files of the military police, a printed postcard made from the Modderdam Postcard series of etchings was banned, and her exhibitions were visited by the security police.
After the fall of apartheid Williamson’s work shifted to the growing social, political and economic problems that continued to complicate transformation within the fledgeling democracy. Her work challenged issues such as the lack of government provision of anti-retrovirals for people living with HIV/AIDS; the difficult legacy of colonialism, xenophobia and the shortcomings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, amongst others.
Commissioned by The Box Museum in Plymouth U.K. last year, ‘Towards a Better World’ is a seven metre high installation which attempts to envision a new kind of monument, one which reflects all sides of a conflict, and one to which new information and images can be added as they emerge.
An ongoing theme in Williamson’s work is that of social justice. This is often expressed in the form of dialogue and much of Williamson’s work is both collaborative – with survivors of oppression – and open in the sense that the audience can participate in the unpacking of the themes the artist addresses. Wall texts and contemporary ephemera throughout the exhibition will give context to the artist’s work, and objects and letters from her personal archive will be shown in a simulation of her Cape Town studio.
Writing on art has also played a pivotal role in Williamson’s life. Her first book, Resistance Art in South Africa (1989), alerted the international art world to the role played by the work of South African artists in challenging the apartheid state and supporting the struggle for freedom, and in 1997, she devised and became founding editor of the website ArtThrob, still the go-to source internationally for information on South African art and artists.
Williamson has had many solo exhibitions in numerous countries, and been represented on ten biennales, but until now there has never been a retrospective surveying her entire career and showcasing her most important works.
It is indeed fitting that the first retrospective of this artist, designated by the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture as one of the nation’s “Living Legends”, should take place in her home city of Cape Town.
SCAD Museum of Art, Georgia, USA
WHAT: Sue Williamson – There is something I must tell you
WHERE: Iziko South African National Gallery, Government Ave, Company Gardens, Cape Town 8001
WHEN: Opens on 22 February 2025 and runs until the end of September.
INFO: T +27 (0) 21 481 3970 | VISIT TOP PHOTO: ‘Messages from the Moat’
IZIKO SOUTH AFRICAN NATIONAL GALLERY [ A]
The WHAT, WHY & WHERE of the
arts scene in around Cape Town
see the 2023 art craft + museums map
and listen in to the
Arts Round Up Fridays @16.10
on Fine Music Radio FMR 101.3fm
The FMR App makes it even easier to tune into the Arts Round Up on Fridays! i-Phone HERE | Android HERE
Another reason Cape Town is placed 3rd in Time Out’s World’s Best Cities for Culture!
