Goodman Gallery is at the forefront of contemporary art in South Africa. Its focus is on artists – from South Africa, the greater African Continent, and other countries – who engage in a dialogue with the African context.
Goodman News
Bromberg & Chanarin win Deutsche Börse Photography Prize for 2013
Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin are winners of the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2013. The London-based artists won the £30,000 prize, awarded at The Ph… Full Story
Alfredo Jaar at the Chilean Pavilion at Venice Biennale
Alfredo Jaar is representing Chile with a major new site-specific installation at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013. Jaar worked with curator Madeleine Grynszt… Full Story
Various artists at the South African Pavilion at Venice Biennale
Works by David Koloane, Gerhard Marx, Maja Marx, Philip Miller, Sam Nhlengethwa, Sue Williamson & Nelisiwe Xaba are featured on the South African Pavilion at … Full Story
Siemon Allen wins Guggenheim Fellowship
Siemon Allen has been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Fine Arts for 2013. In its eighty-ninth annual competition for the Uni… Full Story
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+27 21 462 7573 || cpt@goodman-gallery.com
Jabulani Dhlamini / uMama
Goodman Gallery Cape Town is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Jabulani Dhlamini. In 2011 Dhlamini was awarded the annual Edward Ruiz mentorship, which helps promising young photographers develop a substantial body of work under the mentorship of a professional photographer. Under the guidance of Jodi Bieber, Dhlamini’s project culminated in the exhibition of uMama at the Market Photo Workshop Gallery, now seen in Cape Town for the first time.
In uMama, Dhlamini pays tribute to mothers, and explores the particular challenges faced by women raising children on their own in South African townships. In intimate portraits of these single mothers and their homes, Dhlamini raises a range of questions about the roles women are expected to play, and how the act mothering is framed and perceived in contemporary South African society. And in portraits of young men raised by single mothers, the artist self-reflexively considers what it means to become a man in a house without a father.
Jabulani Dhlamini was born in Warden, Free State in 1983. He received a National Diploma in Photography from the Vaal University of Technology in 2009. He is the recipient of numerous awards in photography, including 2 Profoto Awards in 2008 and 2009, a Fujifilm Southern Africa Photographic Award in 2009 and the Edward Ruiz Mentorship for 2011-2012. He held his first solo exhibition in 2012 at the Market Photo Workshop Gallery. He lives and works in Johannesburg.
Frieze London 2013
17 October - 20 October 2013
Frieze London 2013
17 October - 20 October 2013
Frieze Masters 2013
+27 11 788 1113 || jhb@goodman-gallery.com
Walter Oltmann / Penumbra
Wire is Walter Oltmann’s main medium for making sculptural works and he manipulates it in a way that emphasises hand-made process, using the linear quality of wire to create forms and surfaces through techniques that parallel handcrafts. His new works – created for his solo exhibition Penumbra at Goodman Gallery Johannesburg – explore interconnections between drawing and sculpture and consist mainly of wire wall hangings that resemble overblown lace or crochet work.
Using mostly a thin (1mm diameter) aluminium wire, these net-like works are made by layering and stitching together sections of weave to create a form of three-dimensional tonal drawing. The resulting wall hangings declare their presence through scale and surface texture but often look delicate and at times even insubstantial. “I have made connections to domestic textile practices in previous artworks and continue to explore such forms of making in these works in evoking fragility and the passage of time,” explains Oltmann. “My work thus carries a very definite textile sensibility and I am interested in making connections between decorative ornament and subject matter that seems somewhat contradictory or disturbing in relation to such handcrafted embellishment.”
The works forming part of Penumbra explore archeological images (skulls and skeletons) that Oltmann frequently draws on, engaging with the notion of deep time, such as geological time, change and evolution. Oltmann also more specifically returns to the theme of “mother and child”. His pairing of an adult skull with that of a child’s counters the expected sentiment and underscores the tragic loss of the tender bond between mother and child. What is usually presented as a nurturing and serene scene becomes a disturbing testament to catastrophe. He furthermore explores the image of the sleeping child, another common image used by artists to depict the innocence and serenity associated with sleep, but it has also frequently been used to evoke death or to suggest death as a form of sleep.
The show also presents an extension of Oltmann’s coelacanth images. “I am intrigued by the mythology surrounding the coelacanth as a ‘hybrid’ creature that has been claimed to represent an evolutionary transitional state between fish and land animal (the common title of ‘old four legs’ points to this adaptation of legs developed from fins),” says Oltmann. In other works Oltmann continues his previous exploration of the interface between human and insect, notably beetles and moths. The empty suits and armour, as stand in for the human body, often reference exoskeletal forms of insects and suggest processes of transformation (malting via metamorphosis).
Finally, in the namesake work of the show, Penumbra, Oltmann presents an interpretation of a photographic image of a rocky landscape. It is in fact taken from a documentation of a rock-engraving site. “I wanted to interpret a scene that would carry a sense of deep time and distance – a forlorn place that looks untouched and uninhabitable,” explains Oltmann. “The circular format may recall the view through a telescope, further underlining the notion of distance.”
20 June - 22 July 2013
Walter Oltmann: Walter Oltmann / Penumbra

