First Thursdays in Cape Town has become a monthly ‘Must-Do’. Taking place on the first Thursday of each month, this event invites all art enthusiasts to explore the city’s inspiring art scene and socialise with other people and artists.
Whether you’re a First Thursdays veteran or thinking about making this month your first experience, we’ve highlighted 10 galleries in the city centre with great exhibitions you have to see.
CLOUDIGITAL ART
Adding a fresh edge to Cape Town’s already art scene, this gallery is a ground-breaking space where artists combine conscious art with fundraising for social and ecological movements. Their goal is to build strong social tissue between artists and their worlds.
ON SHOW: Nothing Comes Without Its World
The exhibition is Cloudigital Art’s first exhibition that brings art, technology and philanthropy together while opening an inclusive conversation around ocean conservation in South Africa. The selection of works on show includes wall art, sculptural works, and video installations that centre around the beauty and vulnerability of our marine environments.
Proceeds from the exhibition will go towards the first-of-its-kind, state-of-the-art Marine Wildlife Hospital and other ocean care initiatives. The project is a creative collaboration with the Two Oceans Aquarium Foundation and the V&A Waterfront.
Where: The Foundry, 74 Cardiff Street, De Waterkant, Cape Town
Website: cloudigitalart.io | Facebook: @cloudigitalartgallery | Instagram: @cloudigitalart
THE ARTISTS GALLERY
This unique independent gallery serves as a beautiful and dynamic space dedicated to showcasing art that ignites inspiration. Situated on vibrant Bree Street, The Artists Gallery is operated by a collective of artists and art enthusiasts to highlight the diverse spectrum of artistic expression, ranging from emerging talents to established figures.
ON SHOW: Artist Andrew Ntshabele
Andrew Ntshabele, born in 1986, lives and works in the inner city of Johannesburg. His art is informed by his environment as he observes the world around him with critical eyes. His mixed-media paintings – a fusion of collage and acrylic – depict what he sees and lives in every day.
Andrew’s works investigate the social predicament of the city to understand the root causes of the current inner-city decay. Andrew has been part of The Travelling Art Gallery since its inception and has shown his works at all the exhibitions in Europe.
Where: 34 Bree Street, cnr Waterkant Street, Cape Town CBD
Website: artistsgallery.co.za | Facebook: @ArtistsGalleryCPT | Instagram: @artistsgallery_capetown
ZEITZ MOCAA
A towering structure located at the V&A Waterfront’s Silo District, The Zeitz MOCAA (Museum of Contemporary Art Africa) exhibits, collects and preserves contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora. The museum contains galleries that feature rotating, temporary exhibitions with a dedicated space for a permanent collection.
ON SHOW: Berni Searle On Site
Berni Searle is an artist working across the mediums of photography, video, performance, and installation. Born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1964, Searle’s personal experiences growing up against the backdrop of an apartheid state have deeply influenced her work and artistic expression.
Using her body as ground, the skin as surface, and processes of concealment and revealing, Searle centres the human body, figuratively and at times conceptually, through the absence of the body, to explore questions of the human condition and experience.
Where: V&A Waterfront Silo District, S Arm Rd, Waterfront, Cape Town | Cost: R210 entry fee
Website: zeitzmocaa.museum | Facebook: @ZeitzMOCAA | Instagram: @zeitzmocaa
EBONY/CURATED
Since its establishment in 2015, the gallery has continued to support creatives whose practices engage with intimate lived experiences that are situated within larger cultural and aesthetic contexts.
Loop Editions is an add-on to the gallery, and showcases artists’ originals, editions and collectables in a bright and sunny café space en suite to the gallery.
ON SHOW: … as we see it – Group Exhibition
This group exhibition highlights the work of twelve artists exploring the festival’s central concern of bringing communities together. Working in a variety of mediums and styles, the artists respond through paintings, interspersed with leather, thread, marbles and beads.
This is the world, the show seems to suggest …as we see it, the word ‘we’ encompasses not a common gaze but a series of scintillations, that is, little flashes of light that echo but resist coherence.
Where: 67 Loop St, Cape Town City Centre, Cape Town
Website: ebonycurated.com | Facebook: @ebonygallery | Instagram: @ebonycurated
99 LOOP GALLERY
The gallery is dedicated to exhibiting contemporary and modern African art representing a core group of emerging and established artists. These artists are either from the continent or have historic links to the greater African diaspora. Fine art on view includes work on paper, ceramics, photography, painting and sculpture.
ON SHOW: Love is a Place by Laurinda Belcher and Michal Korycki
This exhibition is a duo show of new works by Laurinda Belcher and Michal Korycki. The show presents Belcher’s abstract paintings and Korycki’s sculptural works.
Where: 99 Loop St, Cape Town City Centre, Cape Town
Website: 99loop.co.za | Facebook: @99loop | Instagram: @99loopgallery
THE CAPE GALLERY
The Cape Gallery is home to some of the oldest galleries, antique shops, and auction houses in Cape Town. Rotating exhibitions add to the diverse and often eclectic mix of work on show. This gallery seeks to expose art that expresses a love for the African continent and carries its distinctive cultural stamp.
ON SHOW: TALK TALK – Group Exhibition
Artwork selected for this show aims, in part, to solicit empathy for the current conditions, as well as to accommodate the independent vision of individual artists who could influence the way South Africans perceive themselves in the future.
The visual imagery conveys complex narratives, emotions, and concepts, which is often more effective than verbal description. In South Africa art, music and sport have demonstrated a capacity to transcend cultural barriers.
Where: 60 Church St, Cape Town City Centre, Cape Town
Website: capegallery.co.za | Facebook: @CapeGallery | Instagram: @cape_gallery
IZIKO SOUTH AFRICAN NATIONAL GALLERY
The Mother City’s premier public art museum houses a vast and critically engaging collection of historical, modern and contemporary artworks from South Africa and abroad; and seeks to create frameworks and spaces that are mixed and mobile and that can operate in trans-disciplinary settings.
ON SHOW: Then I knew I was good at painting: Esther Mahlangu, a Retrospective
In commemoration of her contributions to African art and propelling African art stylings to global audiences, Cape Town hosts the start of the global tour of Dr. Esther Mahlangu’s Retrospective Exhibition.
The exhibition, curated by Nontobeko Ntombela, provides an in-depth exploration of Dr. Mahlangu’s art. Featured are more than 100 contemporary artworks, historic photographs, and a short film which have all been carefully curated and loaned from around the globe.
Where: Government Ave, Gardens, Cape Town
Website: www.iziko.org.za | Facebook: @IzikoMuseums | Instagram: @izikomuseumssa
ECLECTICA CONTEMPORARY
The art at Eclectica often shows practices and materials familiar from art history, but which push these boundaries and explore uncharted territories of representation, technique and theory. Their program of exhibitions features a mix of contemporary solo shows by gallery artists alongside curated group shows.
ON SHOW: Mpho Feni Solo – Chulumanco
The exhibition title, derived from Xhosa, signifies happiness, an emotion sensitively rendered in Feni’s paintings. Highlighting this core emotion, we are drawn into the emotive presence of the artwork. The artist explores the merit of joyful emotions by portraying figures in close-knit formation. As emotions are an integral part of our experience, the artist’s paintings resonate with many, as Feni echoes relatable encounters in our own family gatherings.
Where: 56 Church St, Cape Town City Centre, Cape Town
Website: eclecticacontemporary.co.za | Facebook: @EclecticaContemporary | Instagram: @eclecticacontemporary
VELA PROJECTS
Founded in 2022 with a pop-up exhibition, Vela Projects now presents a boutique selection of artists, offering a programme that resonates with global culture and champions the development of artistic careers.
ON SHOW: Paintings by Peter Clarke and Robert Hodgins.
Known principally for their paintings, they also served as printmakers, writers and educators. Bold, sensuous colour is the hallmark of both painters’ work, and both were passionate observers of the society in which they lived.
Looking at the works gathered in this exhibition, it would seem that both Clarke and Hodgins aimed to address how the individual manifests within structures of power, although they did so from different perspectives
Where: 66 Plein Street, Cape Town
Website: velaprojects.co.za | Facebook: Vela Projects | Instagram: @vela.projects
OUR CAPE TOWN HERITAGE
Our Cape Town Heritage (OCTH) is a registered non-profit organization that preserves Cape heritage and culture by exploring visual art and history through education. The exhibitions serve to educate and uplift communities and youth alike by inspiring ongoing dialogue and encouraging audiences to embrace and honour the rich cultures found within Cape Town
ON SHOW: EKSÊ! Echoes of Self by Kimberley Titus & Gary Frier
The exhibition travels across time and space to discover “coloured” heritage and culture through the experience of the participants, encompassing the distant echoes of ancestors and the interconnection of communities and subcultures.
Discover more about cultural identity as we traverse along remote spaces of solitude within portraiture, while embracing the fluidity of culture as communities continuously mold and redefine cultural concepts through evolution.
Where: Bo Kaap Deli, 14 Church St, Bokaap, Cape Town
Website: ekse-echoes-of-self | Facebook: @OurCapeTownHeritage | Instagram: @ourcapetownheritage
