Sue Williamson

As an artist who started her professional career as a journalist, followed by a stint as a copywriter at a large New York ad agency, Williamson has always been drawn to the power of words. South African literary and archival materials provide the inspiration for each body of work. From a children’s colouring book bought at the Boer War Museum, to a South African guidebook issued by the State Tourist Department in 1936, to witty diaries of the wife of the first British Colonial Secretary in the Cape. Williamson interprets each reference in her distinctive style, offering a unique perspective on South African history.

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Added to the conversation are engraved glass works memorialising the lost buildings of District Six as well as the Postcards from Africa series - ink drawings based on photographic postcards sent in an era of colonial expansion. The series 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. British human rights campaigner Emily Hobhouse - whose newspaper accounts brought reforms after exposing the shocking conditions in the concentration camps set up for Boer women and children during the Anglo-Boer War - is honoured in a work entitled Readers will be interested.