Sue Williamson

Sue Williamson Image courtesy of Marc Newton / SCAD Museum of Art

Sue Williamson (b. 1941) is a South African artist and writer.

Life

Sue Williamson was born in Litchfield, England in 1941. In 1948 she immigrated with her family to South Africa. Between 1963 and 1965 she studied at the Art Students League of New York. In 1983 she earned her Advanced Diploma in Fine Art from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town. ^[1] In 2007 she received the Visual Arts Research Award from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C and in 2011^[2] the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Creative Arts Fellowship.^[3] In 2013 she was a guest curator of the summer academy at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern.

Work

Museums and exhibitions

Williamson’s work engages with themes related to memory and identity formation. Trained as a printmaker, Williamson has worked across a variety of media including archival photography, video, mixed media installations, and constructed objects. Her earlier work, such as Mementos of District Six (1993), Out of the Ashes (1994), and R.I.P. Annie Silinga (1995), are a few early examples that convey her investment in the recuperation and interrogation of South African history. Her ethical lens has expanded in more recent years to consider social issues on a more global scale, as in her work Other Voices, Other Cities, from 2009.

Williamson's work is in the collection of a variety of museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York,^[4] the National Museum of African Art - Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., the South African National Gallery in Cape Town, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Williamson has also participated in group exhibitions including The Short Century (2001), Liberated Voices (1999), the Johannesburg Art Biennale (in 1997 and 1995), the Havana Biennale (1994), and the Venice Biennale (1993).

Publications

In 1997 Sue Williamson established ArtThrob, a prominent online publication that features the work of contemporary South African artists. ArtThrob has been nominated three times as a finalist for the Arts and Culture Trust Award, and in 1999 was nominated for the United Nations for best cultural website.

• South African Art Now, New York: Collins Design, 2009.
• Sue Williamson: Selected Works, Lannsdowne: Double Storey, 2004.
• Art in South Africa: The Future Present, Ashraf Jamal co-author, Cape Town: David Philip, 1996.
• Resistance Art in South Africa, New York: Saint Martins, 1989.

Bibliography

• Grania Ogilvy, Dictionary of South African Sculptors and Painters, Everard Read, 1989.
• Betty La Duke, Africa through the Eyes of Women Artists, Africa World Press, 1991.
• Richard J Powell, Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century, World of Art Series, Thames & Hudson, 1997.
• Philippa Hobbs & Elizabeth Rankin, Printmaking in a transforming South Africa, David Philip Publishers, Cape Town, 1997.
• Olu Oguibe & Okwui Enwezor, Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to Marketplace, MIT Press, 1999.
• Sidney Littlefield, Contemporary African Art, Thames & Hudson, 1999.
• N'Gone Fall & Jean Pivin, Anthologie de l'Art Africain du Xxe Siecle, Revue Noir, 2001.
• Kim Gurney, Sue Williamson in Artthrob, November 2003.
• Nicholas M. Dawes, Sue Williamson: Selected Work, Juta and Company Ltd, 2003.
• Emma Bedford and Sophie Perryer, 10 Years 100 Artists: Art In A Democratic South Africa, Struik, 2004.
• Petra Stegmann, Sue Williamson in Culturebase, 2007.
• Stefanie Jason, Sue Williamson celebrates an enduring female legacy in Mail&Guardian, 31/05/2013.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sue Williamson.

• Sue Williamson on South African History Online.