ERNEST COLE

Ernest Cole was one of South Africa’s first black photojournalists. Largely self-taught, Cole trained himself to raise the camera to his eye and swiftly shoot photographs before concealing the apparatus under his clothing. He was even known on occasion to conceal his camera within a punctured brown paper lunch bag or hollowed-out loaf of bread. Using these techniques, Cole was able to capture images in environments like mines and hospitals, where such photography was forbidden.

Cole’s extensive work is published in the book; House of Bondage – published in 1967. The book functioned as a documentation of the terrible conditions that many black South Africans had to endure under the apartheid regime and was banned in South Africa as a form of censorship.

In House of Bondage, Cole writes; “Three-hundred years of white supremacy in South Africa has placed us in bondage, stripped us of our dignity, robbed us of our self-esteem and surrounded us with hate.”

REMY JUNGERMAN

Through geometric forms embodied in horizontal lines and vertical stripes, Remy Jungerman reveals the essential elements of materials including cotton textile, beads, clay, yarn and wood. His work brings together minimalist modernist traditions in conversation with patterns contained within Surinamese Maroon culture. Jungerman’s installations, sculptures, panels and collages reveal a seamless language of abstraction that challenges notions of modernisms etched in exclusionary narratives. The true location of his modernism lies in a practice that rigorously explores the dichotomies and divisions of geographies and times — rhythm and motion recall connections to water, movement and histories of migration.

Sprout forms part of an accumulation of elemental symbols within Kentridge’s broader practice. This series of bronze sculptures functions as a form of visual dictionary. The sculptures are symbols and ‘glyphs’, a repertoire of everyday objects or suggested words and icons, many of which have been used repeatedly across previous projects. The glyphs can be arranged to construct sculptural sentences and rearranged to deny meaning.

“The glyphs started as a collection of ink drawings and paper cut-outs, each on a single page from a dictionary. Previously I had taken a drawing or silhouette and given it just enough body to stand on its own feet - paper, added to cardboard and put on a stand. With the glyphs, I wanted a silhouette with the weight that the shape suggested. A shape not just balancing in space, but filling space. Something to hold in your hand, with both shape and heft.” - William Kentridge

MISHECK MASAMVU

Oscillating between abstraction and figuration, Misheck Masamvu’s works allow him to address the past while searching for a way of being in the world. His layered painted surfaces and brushstrokes, which are almost visceral, exist as remnants of the physical act of painting and give the sense that multiple temporalities have been included in one picture plane. Beneath the surface of one painted image, an infinity of others exist. Masamvu’s work often depicts figures in nature. Through abstraction, Masamvu’s figures appear in the midst of metamorphosis, absorbed by teeming landscapes which become metaphors for how we might adapt to a new way of interacting with the world.

With a technique that is immediate and direct, Masamvu’s works consist of layered painted surfaces, abstracted forms and brushstrokes which are almost visceral and exist as remnants of the physical action of painting. In establishing a distinct abstract visual language, one gets the sense that multiple temporalities have been included in one picture plane and that beneath the surface of one painted image, an infinity of others exist. The outcome of which is a porous pictorial space, one that moves between representational clarity and rich, abstract abundance.

Convenient Truths is amongst some of the more abstracted paintings within Masamvu’s oeuvre but there are certainly other paintings that have been executed in a similar style and vein. What is most fascinating about these more abstracted works is how Masamvu has utilised space and line within the canvas. Using these aspects and qualities in an abstracted mode, much like Willem De Kooning and other expressionist painters, Masamvu creates and forms an imagined environment that is not associated with any particular geography. Rather, the paintings should perhaps be understood by the mental and psychological landscape – pointing to an alternative reality where each layer of paint, or brushstroke on the canvas, proposes a search to resolve conflicted experiences or decisions.

In the late afternoon of October 15 1985, security police hiding in crates on the back of a lorry opened fire on children playing in the road in the working-class suburb of Athlone, Cape Town. Shaun Magmoed (16) and two others were killed, and nearly 20 injured in what became known as the ‘Trojan Horse’ shooting. Police said they had opened fire because the children were throwing stones. Scores of witnesses denied this. The police, under the command of Lt. Dolf Vermeulen, defended their action, saying it was ‘a necessary technique to protect ordinary road users’.

Truth Games is a configuration of text and image that complicates our relationship with the truth. Through this work, Williamson considers the process of remembering painful histories that occurred in apartheid South Africa. Made with laminated laser prints, wood, metal and plastic, Truth Games draws out media reports and testimonies from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).