Johannesburg

STEVENSON is pleased to present a selection of Jane Alexander's black-and-white photomontages made between 1981 and 1995, showing concurrently with Glenn Ligon's neon installation Untitled (Bruise/Blues).

Since the publication of 46 photomontages in Alexander's small PHOTO-BOOK of 1995, these works have seldom been exhibited. The montages were constructed by cut and paste, re-photographed and printed as silver gelatin prints on fibre-based paper. The montages, referencing and including imagery from the South African States of Emergency during the 1980s and photographs taken by the artist in East Berlin (DDR) in 1982, often with the insertion of the artist's mute human and animal-hybrid sculptures, were a response to the discrimination, brutality and violence of the darkest times of apartheid and of German history, and the Communist ideal, sources of trauma and displacement that continue to haunt South Africa and resonate in Europe and North America today.

Alexander was born in Johannesburg, and lives in Cape Town where she is a professor at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. Her work has been widely shown over the past two decades. Her acclaimed exhibition Surveys (from the Cape of Good Hope), curated by Pep Subirós and organised by the Museum for African Art, in 2013 completed a tour that included Brussels' La Centrale Électrique; the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum in Savannah, Georgia; the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; and the Cathedral of St John the Divine, New York. Other recent solo shows have taken place at La Centrale Électrique, Brussels (2011); Galilee Chapel, Durham University (2009); and Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2005). She has taken part in the biennales of Gwangju, Tirana, Dojima River, Havana, Göteborg, São Paulo, Singapore, Dakar and Venice, and the travelling exhibitions The Divine Comedy (2014-15), Rise and Fall of Apartheid (2012-14), Africa Remix (2004-7) and The Short Century (2001-2), among others.

The exhibitions open on Thursday 17 March, 6 to 8pm.

The gallery is open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm and Saturday from 10am to 1pm.