New and important unseen early works by Sue Williamson, marking the artist's 30th year with Goodman Gallery.
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.'Sue Williamson - Short Stories in a Longer Tale
'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 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.
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.
Artworks
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With the onset of the 'Truth and Reconciliation Commission, long hidden truths emerged: 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. Untitled (St James Massacre) records in low res a TRC hearing filmed on a Sony Handycam from an ancient TV set in New York.
The sudden re-emergence of Jacob Zuma on the national arena is marked by showing again Williamson’s 2014 work, Pass the Parcel, Jacob which followed the story of his rape trial through a series of newspaper cuttings highlighting the uneven power dynamics between Zuma and his accuser.
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.
Artist Bio
Sue Williamson (b. 1941, Lichfield, UK) is one of South Africa’s most important contemporary artists. In the 1970s, Williamson started to make work which addressed social change and by the late 1980s she was well known for her series of portraits of women involved in the country’s political struggle titled, 'A Few South Africans' (1980s).
In 2025, a major retrospective of her five-decades long career, titled 'There’s something I must tell you,' will be shown at the Iziko South African National Gallery, following her UK and US institutional exhibitions in 2023 at The Box, Plymouth and The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia.
In 1997, Williamson founded www.artthrob.co.za, a leading website on South African contemporary art and the first of its kind in the country. Williamson has also authored two major publications - South African Art Now (2009) and Resistance Art in South Africa (1989).
Williamson has participated in biennales around the world, including the Kochi Muziris Biennale (2019); several Havana Biennales as well as Sydney, Istanbul, Venice and Johannesburg biennales.
Major international solo exhibitions include: 'Between Memory and Forgetting,' The Box, Plymouth, UK (2023); 'Other Voices, Other Cities,' Las Palmas (2023); 'Can’t Remember, Can’t Forget,' Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg (2017); 'Other Voices, Other Cities,' SCAD Museum of Art, Georgia (2015), 'Messages from the Moat,' Den Haag, (2003) and 'The Last Supper Revisited,' National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C. (2002).
Group exhibitions include: 'Tell Me What You Remember,' Barnes Foundation (2023); 'Breaking Down the Walls - 150 years of Collecting Art at Iziko,' Iziko South African Museum (2022); 'RESIST! The 1960s Protests, Photography and Visual Legacy,' BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels (2018); 'Women House,' La Monnaie de Paris and National Museum for Women in the Arts (Washington D.C) (2017, 2018); 'Being There,' Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2017); 'Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life,' International Centre for Photography in New York and the Museum Africa in Johannesburg (2014); 'The Short Century,' Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, House of World Cultures, Berlin, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and P.S.1 New York (2001-2).
Collections include: the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Pompidou Centre, Paris; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C; Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town and the Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg. Williamson has authored two books - ‘South African Art Now’ (2009) and ‘Resistance Art in South Africa’ (1989).
Awards and fellowships include: The Living Legends Award (2020), attributed by the South African government’s Department of Sports, Arts and Culture; the University of Johannesburg’s Ellen Kuzwayo Award (2018); the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Creative Arts Fellowship (2011); the Smithsonian’s Visual Artist Research Award Fellowship (2007) and the Lucas Artists Residency Fellowship (2005) from Montalvo Art Center in California.
Williamson lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa.
