Goodman Gallery is pleased to present Short Stories in a Longer Tale, a solo show by Sue Williamson, marking thirty years since her first solo show at Goodman Gallery Johannesburg in 1994, an exhibition which won her the Vita Art Now Award for best exhibition in South Africa that year.

Since then, Williamson has continued to exhibit all over the world, and last year had solo shows at The Box Museum in Plymouth, UK, titled Between Memory and Forgetting; at the Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno in Las Palmas, titled Other Voices, Other Cities and a two-person exhibition with Lebohang Kganye, at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, US, titled Tell Me What You Remember. A major retrospective of her five-decades long career will open at Iziko South African National Gallery on 19 February 2025, titled There’s something I must tell you: a retrospective.

In Short Stories in a Longer Tale, Williamson sources news media and archival references to unpack six key moments in South and West Africa’s complex and layered history, using printmaking, photography, drawing, video, embroidery and installation in her incisive work. 

The Diaries of Lady Anne B delve into the personal papers of Lady Anne Barnard, wife of the first British Colonial Secretary to govern the Cape from 1797-9. A watercolourist of note herself, Lady Anne comments caustically on domestic matters: a hangman who does his job just outside her drawing room windows, a mutiny at sea, distinguished visitors to the Cape, thus giving a unique view of life at the time. For this series, Williamson collaged monoprints with calligraphic notes from the diaries to tell these lively anecdotes.

'In 1990, during a residency at the South African National Gallery, I worked on a series of collaborative portraits of women made on a Canon Colour Laser Copier. One of them was struggle stalwart, Ray Alexander, known for her lifelong fight in support of the rights of workers. The six unique ‘original photocopy’ portraits of her were variations of a polaroid taken of her in the gallery annexe.

On being asked to make a chair for a charity auction, I decided to pay further homage to Ray’s reputation for listening to everyone’s troubles by making a chair on which anyone could sit to talk to her. And in the ‘All Our Mothers’ series of portraits, Ray sits in her own chair, as if in conversation with herself.'

Sue Williamson, 2024

In 1900-2, Britain once more tried to regain control over her old colony, sending 400 000 soldiers to quell the Boer republics. The embroideries in the Stories for Children series are based on the illustrations in My Anglo-Boereoorlog Storie-Inkleurboek, a colouring book bought in the gift shop at the Anglo-Boer War Museum (now referred to as the South African War) in Bloemfontein in the late 1980s. The pictures and text in the book attempt to explain the horrors of that war to a child. Echoing the pictures in the colouring book, the images are hand-embroidered in black cotton on to white organdie; a labour relating to the handmade toys made by the women in the British concentration camps. 

The brave activism of women in the apartheid years, 1948 – 1999, has been a key focus for Williamson. Taken from her All Our Mothers series is a photographic portrait of struggle stalwart, Ray Alexander, known for her lifelong fight in support of the rights of workers. This is echoed by the installation, A chair for Ray Alexander that pays homage to Alexander’s reputation for always listening to others. Sitting with her chin on hand in a listening position, Ray seems to be inviting the viewer to sit down and tell her their troubles. Six unique colour laser printed portraits form a backdrop to the chair. A second activist, Nyameka Goniwe, widow of the assassinated leader Matthew Goniwe, is the focus of Cradock: Caught in the Flood.

Cold Turkey: Stories of Truth and Reconciliation, a forerunner to the artist’s Truth Games series, tells the story of the horrific experiments Eugene de Kock carried out to test a cassette player that was also a bomb.

'In September 1999, I was sitting in a rented room in New York watching the news on an old television set, when suddenly the presenter switched to South Africa and coverage of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission inquiry into the St James Church massacre in Cape Town. Four young and armed black Azapo activists had burst into a church service and fired into the congregation, killing 11 people.

On the screen in front of me, the police were surveying the post-shooting scene in the church. Wrapped bodies lay on the floor. We were listening to the voice of Dawie Ackermann, the husband of one of the victims. To watch this from far off New York was disorientating. I grabbed my Sony Handycam and filmed the screen.

In playback, the technical clash between TV and Handycam became apparent as green bands floated down the camera screen and the soundtrack hissed, but the low tech result had an interesting immediacy.

I printed out frames on my Canon colour laser copier, and added vinyl lettered captions to make this piece.'

Sue Williamson, 2024

Looking further back on the continent’s timeline, the ink drawings series Postcards from Africa is based on photographic postcards sent in an era of colonial expansion. Here the artist redraws the landscapes and situations imaged in these old photographs, but the people who once stood so stiffly in many of them are no longer required to be present.