Investec Cape Town Art Fair Opens Its 11th Edition, With an Emphasis on Highlighting South Africa’s Local Art Scene

“Let’s keep in touch,” reads an inscription on a pink ceramic vessel by Cape Town–based sculptor Githan Coopoo that has been placed near the entrance to the Investec Cape Town Art Fair. Coopoo’s optimistic sentiment was palpable in the Cape Town International Convention Centre during the VIP preview on Thursday for the fair’s 11th edition, which includes more than 100 exhibitors from 24 countries. The energy had actually started a few days earlier as the Mother City’s annual art week kicked off with exhibitions, performances, and talks across the breezy ocean town.

The vernissage saw a crowd of around 5,000 attendees which included largely local collectors taking an early look at 400 works mainly by African artists and artists its diasporas. Key local market heavyweights like Goodman Gallery, Stevenson, SMAC Gallery, WHATIFTHEWORLD, and Southern Guild, which will open a Los Angeles outpost later this month, showed alongside Kenya’s Circle Art, Galerie Cécile Fakhoury from Côte d’Ivoire, A.Gorgi from Tunisia, Botswana-based Ora Loapi, and Borna Soglo Gallery from Benin. Several  Italian exhibitors, such as Galleria Giovanni Bonelli, Galleria Anna Marra and Shazar Gallery,  were also on hand, likely due to the fair’s Milanese owner company Fiera Milano.

Laura Vincenti, the fair’s director, described the last decade as “a learning curve” to ARTnews. In that time, she has focused on bringing “galleries with content that communicates with the local scene,” she said. “I have learned that not all galleries are prepared to show in Cape Town.”

In addition to the main gallery section, Investec also includes eight curated sections like Generations, which is new to the fair this year. (Exhibitors can participate in multiple sections.) Organized by Natasha Becker and Amogelang Maledu, Generations pairs young artists with established names to show parallels between artists’ work across decades. The section’s cash prize of $80,000 South African Rand (around $4,200) was awarded to Johannesburg-based painter Boemo Diale, who exhibited with South African gallery Kalashnikovv Gallery.

“The goal is to create fresh perspective on historical figures through the lens of contemporary artists who are in dialogue with the past,” Becker told ARTnews.

One example is placing SMAC Gallery’s presentation of Bonolo Kavula’s ephemeral geometric cutouts of shweshwe cloth adjacent to the Melrose Gallery’s booth dedicated to color-bursting paintings and sculptures by Esther Mahlangu, the grand dame of South Africa’s art scene whose career survey at the Iziko South African National Gallery also opened this week.

Nearby, the vibrantly corporal paintings by Terence Maluleke at the Southern Guild’s booth flirt with Riaan Bolt Antiques’s group presentation dedicated to early Apartheid-era tapestry and pottery which has largely remained in European collections. Southern Guild sold all seven of Maluleke paintings which range between $5,000 and $8,600 before the end of the VIP day. “The response was extremely positive,” said Southern Guild director Jana Terblanche of the gallery’s multiple presentations at the fair, which also sales of four Kamyar Bineshtarigh paintings for around $20,000 each and a timber-and-acrylic sculpture by Dominique Zinkpè for $24,000. 

In the main section, Goodman Gallery exhibited a selection of roster artists including international powerhouses like William Kentridge and Yinka Shonibare alongside Kudzanai Chiurai and Gabrielle Goliath, who will both feature in this year’s Venice Biennale. On par with the gallery’s intergenerational presentation, prices for works sold on the first day ranged broadly from $12,000 to $275,000.

Goodman is also showing in a section of the fair called “Tomorrows/Today,” which speculates on “tomorrow’s leading names,” per the fair’s description. The gallery introduces the subtly documentarian photographs of Lindokuhle Sobekwa ahead of his first institutional show at the Johannesburg Art Gallery this September.

“Sobekwa’s imagery has a delicate yet powerful quality that draws viewers into the stories he articulates. He is definitely an artist we are excited to support,” said Olivia Leahy, Goodman Gallery’s head of curatorial.

Stevenson, another established South African gallery, had in its booth a kitchen photograph by South African Pieter Hugo; a nocturnal-hued, large-scale abstraction, titled The Abundance of life (2023), by New Zealand-based Nigerian painter Ruth Iga; and Penny Siopis’s Mercy (2007), a striking drawing of a figure that leaps out of the frame into a plastic chain to spell the work’s title.

The scene-stealer in WHATIFTHEWORLD’s grouping was Chris Soal’s intricately built toothpick and concrete sculpture, Inferno, which sold for $17,100. Pierre Vermeulen’s mixed-media linen painting of faux gold leaf and sweat, Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond, found a collector for $13,400.

Another standout at the fair comes in the Solo section, where EBONY/CURATED has a presentation dedicated to local painter Anico Mostert, who makes dreamlike oil on canvases with powdery hues. His 2023 work, From View to View, sold for $4,200 on the first day. 

One of the fair’s section with the abundant promise of discovery is ALT, which provides a platform for non-traditional commercial formats, such as curatorial collectives, nomadic spaces, advisory services, and online galleries. South African curator and adviser Anelisa Mangcu’s four-year old initiative Under The Aegis builds a corporal tie between Dutch-Ghanian photographer Casper Kofi’s dramatically lit images of landscapes and men, alongside Buqaqawuli Thamani Nobakad’s female protagonists painted  with acrylic on lace and paper.

Church Projects’s gold color-painted booth drew in visitors to the moody prints of Durban-based photographer Alka Dass, showing men that he adorns with gentle punctures of red threads and beads. Borna Soglo Gallery displayed London-based artist Tamibé Bourdanné’s photographs of Bubi Ogisi performing in Benin for a personal exploration of African masquerades that are accompanied by the plush toys donned by Ogisi in the booth’s corner.

The Investec Cape Town Art Fair continues into the weekend, with stand-out programming like a two performances by Cape Town–based artist Thania Petersen at the Bo Kaap Museum on Saturday evening, accompanied by jazz musician Hilton Schilder, Afrikaaps rapper, poet Jitsvinger, and a handful of dancers.