There are two urban landscape artworks hanging side by side at Johannesburg’s Goodman Gallery that succinctly sum up Sam Nhlengethwa’s latest exhibition, The Past and the Present ... Now is the Time. The first one is 27 April 1994, a township collage with oil and acrylic depicting a long queue of people waiting to vote in SA’s first democratic election. Though the general feeling is upbeat, the people’s faces are deadpan, except for that of a young child in the foreground who is beaming, perhaps at the prospects of a brighter future. The second is Headlines, a Johannesburg cityscape with newspaper posters plastered against a wall. Hanging together, the pieces inform the cyclical and all-pervasive theme of the exhibition, which could be summed up as "Where have we come from, where are we going?"
It’s interesting to view Nhlengethwa’s private collection (on display) of clippings, newspapers and various memorabilia from the days of apartheid and to realise how true it is that "th...
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