Print Matters
Etching, Screen Prints, Lithographs, Linocuts and Woodcuts from the Sanlam Art Collection. On view until 30 August 2019
The Sanlam Art Collection has extensive collection of printmaking dating from the early twentieth century to the present. Printmaking techniques represented on this exhibition include etching, woodcuts, linocuts, lithographs, and silkscreen prints.
Three print portfolios form the core of the exhibitions. Willem Boshoff’s “Kykafrikaans” is a unique set of screen prints derived from concrete poetry composed an executed by the artist on a manual typewriter in the late 1970s and published in an anthology in 1980. The only one of its kind. The African Renaissance Portfolio compiled by Jonathan Comerford of Hard Ground Printmaker in 2004 celebrates South Africa’s decade of Democracy with a unique set of linocuts by ten then emerging artists working in Cape Town.
“Chariots” is a series of etchings produced by Ada van der Vijer, then lecturer at the University of Cape Town Michaelis School of Finer Art in the early 1980s. The images are a series of imaginary chariots or carnival floats, which traditionally would have carried tableaux satirizing political personalities or undermining commonly accepted symbols. Van der Vijver’s object of satire is the symbolism which would have been used in military type parades by the “Apartheid” state to celebrate its continued existence and hold on power of the national party.
Other artists represented in this exhibition of note are Nita Spilhaus, Judy Woodborne, Philippa Hobbs and Diane Victor also in good company with Robert Hodgins, William Kentridge and Hardy Botha .