JOHANNESBURG

"Out rage us" promised the invitation to this joint showing at the Goodman, but the extent to which viewers will be shocked depends largely, I think, on whether they have ever seen the work of the duo before. Cohen is the drag performance artist, the one who won last year's Vita. His show here, which includes an installation of his costumes, objects and screen-printed furniture, is winningly entitled 'Nobody loves a fairy when she's 40'. It has its moments, but by now it's all a little dιjΰ vu, and it seems time for Cohen to stop fluttering his/her wings for a second, and think what a strong next step might be.

Peet Pienaar is the Afrikaans boy from the Western Transvaal, the ex-rugby player, who wittily exposes cultural and sporting myths for the morally superficial and hypocritical entities they often are. South Africa is used to lionising its rugby players in endless trashy commercial giveaways, and Pienaar has been making his own satirical versions of such items for some years.

On this show, he has reached a truly heroic scale in pseudo-devotional objects with seven giant portrait quilts. If you have ever wished to snuggle up under a rugby player, you could go for one of these. Each measures three metres square and so large are the images - "sort of like Chuck Close", says Pienaar - that every quilt comes supplied with the kind of spy glass fitted in front doors, so viewers can step back a bit and get the total effect of the pixelated close-up. Sweet dreams.

Then there are 70 little trophies, and a dialogue between two facing television sets which play endless soap operas. Finally, there's a flower arrangement which says it all: "I love you, goodbye, hello and sorry."

Until March 20 at the Goodman Gallery, corner Jan Smuts Avenue and Chester Drive, Parkwood. Phone: 788-1113; fax: 788-9887; e-mail: goodman@iafrica.com. Website: http://www.goodman.com. Gallery hours: Tuesday to Friday 9.30am to 5.30pm, Saturdays 9.30am to 4pm.

Jo Ractliffe at the Mark Coetzee Fine Art Cabinet

Elements of 'End of Time', Jo Ractliffe's project which took place over new year at Nieu Bethesda in the Eastern Cape Karoo, are here re-presented in the very different confines of the Mark Coetzee Fine Art Cabinet. 'End of Time' grew out of Ractliffe's desire to make a piece about the ancient and epic landscape of the Karoo and about the experience of journeying through it ("It wasn't about finding the dead donkeys, it was that space I wanted to work with, that space").

At regular intervals, in an attempt to echo that monotonously mesmerising journeying, Ractliffe took a photograph through the windscreen of the road ahead in a series called 'N1'. At the Cabinet, these have been printed fairly small, framed in white, and mounted back to back in a strip running across the width of the gallery at eye level. The presentation seems a little fussy; the images not quite big enough to draw the viewer in, the frames interfering with looking at the slight variations from image to image. Also in this space is a fine large-scale print of the head of the dead donkey which was the starting point of 'End of Time', and a table at which the limited-edition artist's book with text by Mike Nicol is available.

In the smaller space, viewers can gaze downwards at the backlit image, set into a false floor, of Ractliffe's final photograph of her beloved dog Gus in his grave. It's an image which Ractliffe, who is on record as saying a photograph can never stand in for reality, found she was compelled to take. At once a little grotesque, deeply upsetting (such is our society that our reaction to pictures of dead animals is often stronger than to dead humans) and patently sentimental, the piece is a brave one. And in the sensitive installation, the smaller space at the Cabinet has lost its usual identity and been transformed into a softly glowing white shrine.

Exhibition website: www.africacan.org/endoftime. Jo Ractliffe is the subject of this month's artbio.

'End of Time' opens on March 3 at 6pm and closes on March 31. 120 Bree Street. Phone: 424-1667; email: Mark@cabinet.co.za. Website: www.cabinet.co.za.

Part of the text on one of Breyten Breytenbach's scroll pieces reads: "… dis net kruiperige woorde … Die woorde kyk oor hul skouers na jou, en jy weet nie of hulle flikflooi of dreig nie …" Loose translation: "… it's just arse-creeping words … The words look over their shoulders at you, and you don't know if they are flirting or threatening ..."

That artist/writer/poet Breytenbach is both master of and in thrall to words is clear from his new show, appropriately named 'Woordwoord', a title which itself sounds like the hooting of a wise old owl, or the sighing of the wind. It's a magical and rich interweaving of images and text, in which ideas, stories in a variety of languages, different identities, biblical allusions are explored in a series of pieces which vibrate with creative energy.

The artist portrays himself in any number of ways - as a morose goat, as devil and as angel. The Coca-Cola Communist is a witty allusion to an unnamed person, here referred to as M. Maose, with Chairman Mao demeanour but Mickey Mouse ears. There are watercolours in brilliant hues, etchings, monoprints, even a three-dimensional paper sculpture portrait in which the artist, glasses perched on his nose, reads a book. It's one of those rare shows in which almost every piece commands the careful attention of the viewer. So much has the artist put into each piece, one wouldn't want to miss a thing.

The artist will conduct a walkabout of his exhibition on Saturday March 6 at 11.30am.

The show closes Saturday March 20. 35 Church Street. Phone: 424-7436; fax: 423-2637. Gallery hours: Monday to Friday 10am to 5pm, Saturdays 10am to 1pm.

Uncomfortable associations are aroused by the medical syringes Gunter Obojkovits injects freely into found objects in his exhibition of sculptures and objects, 'In-tro-jec-tion', which opens at the Hänel Gallery on March 7. One thinks of enbalming fluids, drugs, movies in which victims are rendered unconscious with a quick jab. Obojkovits himself talks of "man's interference with nature, the turning around and deconstruction of tradition, art and form". The artist was born in Austria in 1963, and settled in South Africa three years ago.

84 Shortmarket Street. Phone 423-1406; fax 423-5277. Gallery hours: Tuesday to Friday 11am to 5pm, Saturday 10am to 2pm.

Best known for his work on television documentary series Ordinary People, Nicolaas Hofmeyr here turns his attention to stills of the mountain shepherds, their sheep and their dogs in the isolated country of Lesotho. Sheep are sheep, and handsome enough against the craggy mountains, but it is the expressive and tightly-bonded relationship between the shepherds and their ever-present dogs which has caught Hofmeyr's attention, and lifts these finely observed photographs out of the travel documentary category.

Verboom's photographs of the Namibian landscape and bodies, on the other hand, are stereotyped in the extreme, and have the curiously dated look of calendar pictures which have hung too long on the wall.

Until March 7.

This month, Joγo Ferreira Fine Art will be hosting a group exhibition of work by Tracey Payne, Dorothee Kreutzfeldt, Anton Karstel, Peter Beard, Allun Turner, William Kentridge, Julia Tiffin and others. It's an opportunity to see Kentridge's powerful comment on the activities of the SADF in the Eighties, his outsize etching With Casspirs of Love.

Open March 2 to 26. 80 Hout Street. Phone 423-5403; fax 423-2136; e-mail joao@iafrica.com. Gallery hours: Tuesday to Friday 10am to 5pm, Saturdays 10am to 2pm.

'The Structure of Things Then' is both the title of the exhibition of 136 black and white photographs by David Goldblatt now up the South African National Gallery, and the title of the accompanying book. In a sense, this title - direct, unadorned, forceful - lays out precisely what the viewer will see: apartheid South Africa, revealed by its buildings, its monuments, its ostentatious or humble or partly demolished houses, its shacks, all of them underpinned by the structures of the state which dictated exactly what skin colour one had to have to live or shop or worship in that building. It is hard to imagine a more truthful record of the apartheid years. Context is given by the extended captions. Formally, photographically, the work is flawless.

Goldblatt's eye is merciless and dispassionate. There is no unnecessary detail in his photographs. Often, a narrative is set up by the revisiting of a site photographed years earlier to see what changes had come about. Thus we have The Post Office, Senderwood, Johannesburg, December, 1974. An unprepossessing suburban post office with two doors, one on each side. Blankes/Whites (double doors) on the left, Nie-Blankes/Non-Whites (single door) on the right. A second photograph is captioned The Post Office, Senderwood, 19 June 1988. Same building, slightly different angle. Now the door on the right has been built over, and there's a blank space over the remaining door where the Blankes/Whites sign once filled in.

The exhibition comes to us from the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Netherlands Architecture in Rotterdam. David Goldblatt is a contemporary master, and must not be missed.

At last receiving the kind of gallery attention the medium deserves, an important exhibition of video art entitled 'Channel' opens on Tuesday March 23 at the AVA. Curated by Robert Weinek and Gregg Smith, the show promises all sorts of visual treats, and since it is only on for two weeks, make sure you don't miss it.

In the Long Gallery downstairs is Bridget Baker's Stitch, a preview of the brilliant two-projector video installation the artist will present at the Museum for African Art in New York later this year, and a new piece by Malcolm Payne, entitled Ten canons of stupidity (the first version).

In the Main Gallery is the award-winning video Alien by Minnette Vári, and an "incredibly silly, funny piece" by Larry the Inflating Sculpture's alter-ego, Adam Lieber, called Sore Thumb. Here too is Stephen Hobbs, with a multi-projection piece satirising the topographical and climatic distinctions between Johannesburg and Cape Town. On a monitor is Konrad Welz, this month's project artist, with Electric Nosebleed, Chrome Romancer and Ad Space 2000.

Upstairs on the ArtStrip, a row of six monitors will provide a non-stop programme of looped videos by local and international artists, including Lisa Brice, Anton Karstel, William Kentridge, Mossis la Mantia, Peet Pienaar, Richard Penn, Jo Ractliffe, Robin Rhoode, Joachim Schönfeldt, Karen Thorne, Clive van den Berg, Francois van Heerden and Amanda Williamson.

There will also be a series of workshops led by the participating artists on March 24 and 25 with a panel discussion on video art led by Malcolm Payne on March 24 at 7pm.

For further details, contact the AVA Gallery at (021) 424-7436.

The opening of two exhibitions which are the results of an exchange between Adelaide in Australia and Cape Town, a South/South dialogue, marked Human Rights Day at the South African National Gallery. The first is called 'Isintu', and can be interpreted as a collective African perspective on life. Curated by Zayd Minty, ex-cultural officer of Robben Island, and Thumelo Mosako, the South African artists showing are Berni Searle from Cape Town, Usha Prajapant from Pretoria, Nati Khanyile from Durban, Ayanda Mje from PE and Ezekial Budeli and Sandile Zulu from Johannesburg.

'Ceremony, Identity and Community' consists of 39 works by 16 Aboriginal artists, a video programme and an educational programme in which the Australian artists will participate. This component has been managed by the Flinders Art Museum in Adelaide.

The project explores cultural identity and issues relating to the contested terms of "blackness" and "indigenous" in South Africa, and seeks to create a dialogue between indigenous Australians and black South Africans around issues of ceremony, identity and community.

Until June 21 at the South African National Gallery, Government Avenue. Phone (021) 45-1628.

Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees opens

Running for seven days only, the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees opens in Oudtshoorn on Thursday March 25 and closes on March 31. Among the host of theatrical productions, two substantial visual arts initiatives are on offer. 'Bloedlyn', curated by Lien Botha, pairs artists and writers (see News), and 'Oos Wes Tuis Bes', curated by Lize Hugo and Mark Coetzee, presents 14 artists working around the concept of the home. "There often seems to be a chasm of mis-definition in describing the 'homes' of white suburbia and the 'housing' or 'shelters' of the informal or council-assisted sector. The latter is described as a practical necessity, and the former as an ideologial preserve to be nurtured and protected at all costs," writes Mark Coetzee in a catalogue statement.

Here are brief notes, pictures and artists' statements:

Andries Botha re-presents Home, first seen in this country at the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale in 1997. Text from TRC statements is embedded into sheets of lead attached to the steel-lined walls of Botha's house. "Home deals with the quest for emotional and geographical territory. It frames history as a contentious zone invoked by the voices of South Africans, taken from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission."

Bridget Baker, in a work titled Bridget says: Hold what we have loosely, allows viewers to see the contents of her home through the walls of a loosely knitted passageway which runs down the centre - old letters from family and friends, weighed down by mothballs ... "Obsessively gathering essences of her past, Baker struggles to maintain a sense of tradition, family; of belonging - all the while reminding herself that these are the things that cannot be owned."

Lien Botha: "Voëlhuis bevat grepe uit die dagboek van ene Maria Blou. In die vorm van 'n sirkelstrokie sal die besoeker aan hierdie veerligte huis kennis maak met onder andere Miami se papegaaituin en Miss Wei van Taipei …"

Masha du Toit: "My work (The City My Skin) explores my division of loyalty between my two home cities, Durban and Cape Town. When I first moved to Durban, I discovered how much of my identity is tied to particular places and people … but I also found excitement in discovering a new home … I explore these issues of memory, longing and change."

Liza Grobler in Untitled will involve the women of Oudtshoorn in making a three-dimensional object through traditional hand-work methods.

Matthew Haresnape: "With this installation (Domicile 1), I wish to interpret the church as 'house' ('house of God', 'cultural house') in relation to the Afrikaner sense of past, present and future identity … and … the way in which this identity positions itself in the new South Africa."

Randolph Hartzenberg: "My piece is entitled Salt Between the Walls. Housing and homelessness continue to be very real concerns at the heart of our ruptured social fabric and echo, day and night, like the incessant, dissonant tolling of enormous hollow bells across the cardinal poles of expectation, denial, futility, humilation, death, anxiety, fear and anger."

Isolde Krams: "Making a rubber toilet I applied traditional rules of sculpture, though the subject matter may seem off, or even taboo. This toilet is to remind the viewer of Oldenburg's Soft Toilet and parody Duchamp's urinal, as 'armut' (poverty) shall be written on the rim. I like the idea of making a lavatory out of biodegradable materials and waste products."

Aliza Levi: "I have always been fascinated by the word 'home' - its association with comfort, containment and support, yet its absolute potential for dysfunction, suffocation and cruelty. In this piece, I deal with a particular form of that cruelty - particular to South African 'white suburbia'."

Mustafa Maluka, who has himself described as a "graffiti artist", contributes a poem as his statement, which begins "My gedagte dwells to wells of consciousness/ The knowledge I express gets less/ 'cause I'm under stress …"

Pat Mautloa: "I enjoy working with and about spaces and their appropriation. In this instance, I am using a photograph of a brazier, duplicated on all four sides. One sees difeence landscapes on each side, and as such the chosen space changes."

Luan Nel: "My work is a white Teflon inflatable, entitled Pa se Tent, which …is an almost exact replica of the house we lived in in Verwoerdburg Park in Alberton when I was 14 years old. The white house inflates and deflates at regular intervals, creating the illusion of breathing …"

Andrew Putter: "Somebody visiting the home of a woman who purposefully lived a very simple life wanted to dispose of some packaging he'd brought a gift of food in. He couldn't find a dustbin in her home - for her, there was no category 'away'."

Sue Williamson: A structure first made as one of three for the District Six Sculpture Project has been brought to Oudtshoorn. "Viewsite (Constitution Street, District 6) is the facade of a house, with a window. On the window is engraved the view of the busy street which was once there, but was demolished in the Eighties. A hotel now stands on the spot."

Larry goes to Redeye

That gorgeously spotted, yellow, many-limbed piece of luscious latex, Larry the Inflating Sculpture, will be seen in Durban this week. Larry has invited himself to the next of the wildly successful series of Redeye art events at the Durban Art Gallery, and may be seen in performance there on Friday March 5 at 6pm. Also on the agenda is Durban artist Carol-Anne Gainer, and then of course there will be great music and the usual buzz, all against the background of the gallery art collection.

For more info, phone 300-6238.

Cape Town photographer Dave Southwood is showing the twinned images of his 'In Between' series at the Durban Centre for Photography. It is in the relationship between two very disparate images that Southwood has found inspiration for this series. Sometimes colour is the link, sometimes one composition will echo another. It is the skill of the photographer that each pairing satisfies formally and conceptually.

Until March 11. Durban Centre for Photography, 166 Bulwer Road. Phone 22-2293.

Tracy Gander is a young Cape Town photographer who has "always played with notions of blur and focus, of concealment and the revealed". Her earlier work dealt with issues of femininity and identity, falling within a history of artists working with the body or themselves. In this new show at the NSA, 'Salt', Gander switches her attention to landscape, and more particularly those "almost indefinable, ever-changing edges found at the point where lands and ocean meet".

Horizons disappear in this body of work which attempts to focus in on the fluid essence, the ceaseless motion of the ocean. Gander shows herself to be adept at capturing a whole range of poetic and lyrical moments in these moody colour photographs.

Opens at 4pm on March 14. Closes April 1. At the NSA Gallery, Bulwer Road, Glenwood. Phone 22-2293.

An exhibition of new work by Vanessa Anderson entitled 'Past Personal Present' opened at the Natal Society of Arts Gallery on Sunday March 14.

For more information, phone (031) 22-2293. 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood, Durban.