The exhibition looks back at themes that have consistently appeared throughout the artists’ career, such as absence and loss, and their continued importance in the present.

An intervention in the space of the gallery, for instance, allows visitors to gaze through a window, especially uncovered for this exhibition, which overlooks the area that was once District Six. On a new window, installed over the old one, Williamson has engraved the scene as it exists today, but has also included the streets and the dense rows of cottages that would have been there in 1960.

Similarly The Lost District, five other works based on old photographs and engraved on sheets of glass, will also memorialize what is no longer there. The delicate lines of Williamson’s incised glass are difficult to see, but show up clearly in the crisp grey shadows cast on the wall behind the work.

In other works, Williamson presents a new piece from her series Other Voices Other Cities. Since 2009, the series explores the definition of place to cities and citizens. In each new city, she works by setting up a workshop of young artists and other residents, asking them to discuss what distinguishes their city and the people of that city from one another. At the conclusion of the workshop participants meet again and hold up letters of the alphabet to spell out the message for a word-by-word series of photographs. At a time when much of the world is in constant flux, the dialogue created by residents of different cities is engaging and revealing. Williamson’s newest addition to the series is the city of Paris, shot in mid-January.

The show also features preparatory mixed media works for a larger video installation that investigates another key theme in the artists’ oeuvre, the long-term effects of the violence of apartheid on those who experienced it at the time, and also on the new generation.

The Past Lies Ahead, Sue Williamson’s new exhibition at Goodman Gallery Cape Town, coincides with the launch of the monograph, Sue Williamson: Life and Work covering the artist’s entire career, published by Skira.

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