British Museum SA expo goes to art of SA’s past
A 77 000-year-old beaded necklace and an 800-year-old gold rhino from South Africa go on display in London soon in a landmark exhibition.
The art works, among 200 pieces from South Africa, will give visitors to the British Museum an insight into the country’s history.
The exhibition, titled South Africa: the art of a nation, will be presented from October 27 to February 26.
This is the first major exhibition on South African art in the UK and explores 100 000 years of history through archaeological, historic and contemporary art works.
Sponsored by US-based Jack and Betsy Ryan, patrons of the museum, the exhibition features British Museum objects and loans from other institutions and collectors.
Also in the collection are the gold treasures of Mapungubwe, dating from AD1220, discovered in three royal graves.
The haul includes sculptures of a cow, a wild cat and a rhino — which is the symbol of the Order of Mapungubwe, South Africa’s highest honour.
The oldest piece to go on display will be a 77 000-yearold shell bead necklace which was discovered at Blombos Cave in the Western Cape.
Alongside the necklace will be Karel Nel’s Potent
Fields, which consists of two planes of red and white ochre. The tension between the white and coloured planes echoes the colour divide of apartheid.
Included in the collection is work by Cape Town-based artist Penny Siopis and a sculpture by Owen Ndou.
Also on display will be a collaborative 2m-wide textile art work from Bethesda Arts Centre called The Creation of
the Sun. The centre’s artists are descendants of South Africa’s first people, San Bushmen and Khoekhoen, who were inspired by archival recordings of their ancestors’ beliefs to produce contemporary representations of their founding stories.
Siopis completed Cape of Good Hope: A History
Painting, in which she uses reworked photocopies of 19th-century abolitionist cartoons to constitute the body of a woman seen from behind, in 1989.
“The painting is now part of the Ronald Lauder collection in London. It was sold in 1990 while on a tour in London,” said Siopis.
“I made the [series of] paintings as a way to challenge the dominant views of history presented by white settlers.”
Siopis said she was pleased her work had been considered for an exhibition that included archaeology in its bid to get to grips with the history of South Africa.
Hartwig Fischer, director of the British Museum, said the exhibition explored the long and diverse history of South African art and challenged audience preconceptions.
The British Museum has been collecting contemporary African art for over 20 years.