Very large signed Sue Williamon etching titled "Kalahari" and numbered Artists' proof. Measures 62cm x 52cm without the frame. Mounted and framed but no glass. Shipping R60.
Born in England in 1941, Sue Williamson immigrated to South Africa in 1948 with her family. She studied at the Art Students' League in New York (1963-65) and received an advanced diploma from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, in 1983. She has written a number of books on contemporary South African arts and is founder and editor of Artthrob, an online art journal.
She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including The Short Century (2001), Liberated Voices (1999), Johannesburg Art Biennale (1997, 1995), Havana Biennale (1994) and Venice Biennale (1993). Her works are held in many private and public collections in the United States and South Africa. She lives and works in Cape Town.
Sue Williamson has been a key figure on the South African art scene since the early 1980s when she produced A Few South Africans, a groundbreaking series of portrait prints featuring women in the struggle against apartheid.
Williamson’s work has always been about addressing social issues and mediating contemporary history through the people who are living through it. After the end of apartheid she addressed the stories that came to light during the hearings at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and subsequently addressed the HIV/AIDS pandemic in a moving series entitled From the Inside.
Last year, Williamson undertook a large-scale commission at Cape Town International Airport on a 30-metre glass wall, producing a work entitled A Random History of Cape Town, 1499 – 1994. Research for this project led her to the diaries of Lady Anne Barnard, wife of the British Colonial Secretary of the Cape Colony. From 1797 to 1800 Lady Anne wrote freely and openly of daily life in Cape Town, bearing witness to the treatment of the ‘Hottentots’, the intrigues, the babies of suspicious parentage, the fears of a slave revolt, the floggings, the fleas, the food … the complex picture she paints of early colonialism throws light on later history.
Williamson’s work forms part of almost every museum collection in South Africa and is also included in many international art institutions and private collections.
