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Monday 09:00 - 17:00 Tuesday 09:00 - 17:00 Wednesday 09:00 - 17:00 Thursday 09:00 - 17:00 Friday 09:00 - 17:00 Saturday 10:00 - 15:00

SMAC Gallery

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SMAC Gallery

CAPE TOWN
25 Church Street
City Centre

STELLENBOSCH
De Wet Centre
Church St In addition, SMAC maintains an active publishing initiative.

SMAC Gallery is a leading South African contemporary art gallery representing established and emerging artists from South Africa, Africa, and further afield. SMAC was established in Cape Town in 2011, with spaces in Johannesburg and Stellenbosch. With a programme focused on presenting the work of contemporary African artists, SMAC Gallery was established in Cape Town in 2011, with spaces in Johann

esburg and Stellenbosch. The gallery manages a dynamic programme of exhibitions and curatorial projects that focus on contemporary artistic discourses, while facilitating collaborative projects with local and international institutions and artists. SMAC Gallery’s art fair participation includes Art Basel Miami Beach, The Armory Show, Art Brussels, Artissima.

04/09/2026

UPCOMING | CAPE TOWN PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL

Following a highly successful four-month run in Johannesburg, Fashion_The Image, one of South Africa’s most talked-about fashion photography exhibitions, now joins the Cape Town Photography Festival, opening at SMAC Gallery from the 2nd to the 26th of September.

Premiered at the Roger Ballen Centre for Photography and the Inside Out Centre for the Arts in Forest Town, Johannesburg, the exhibition examines the role of fashion photography in shaping visual cultures across South Africa, with its Johannesburg presentation drawing thousands of visitors into the conversation.

Curator and fashion director of Wanted magazine, Sharon Armstrong describes the exhibition as a celebration of images that shifted taste and opened doors:
“These images defined moments, launched careers and shaped how African fashion entered the world. They represent not just the moment, and zeitgeist of
their time, but the power of the image and the collaborations that made those images possible.“

Curated by Armstrong in partnership with Aspasia Karras, Editor of Wanted magazine, and developed with Dr Erica de Greef and Ayabukwa Magocoba of the African Fashion Research Institute, the exhibition traces the evolution of
fashion photography in South Africa, through a curated selection of works by many of the photographers who have shaped South African fashion photography today.

Fashion_The Image examines how the photograph carries styles, gestures and ways of seeing across generations, re-positioning the fashion photograph from a fragile and disposable medium, to one of the defining visual languages of the past five decade.

In Fashion _The Image’s Capetown iteration, one will encounter a collection of previously unseen collaborations between Roger Ballen and Comme des Garçons, a retrospective of work by Koto Bolofo, one of Africa’s most celebrated fashion photographers, and a curated selection of works by leading contemporary photographers from across South Africa and the continent,
including:
Pieter Hugo, Nontsikelelo Veleko, Kevin Mackintosh, Antonia Steyn, Tatenda Chidora, Michael Oliver Love

28/08/2026

SAVE THE DATE | MARELI LAL | OFFSET

Save the date for, OFFSET, a solo exhibition of new works by Mareli Lal, on Thursday, 10 September, from 18h00 at SMAC Gallery, Cape Town, 25 Church Street.

Offset runs in conjunction with the Cape Town Photography Festival.

Mareli Lal

26/08/2026

ON SHOW | a little show

Discover works by Sundus Saad, currently on view in A Little Show, a group exhibition at SMAC Cape Town.

Working with found objects like medical pills or everyday materials like thread and fiber Leila Abrahams and Sundus Saad use abstraction as a seemingly dispassionate access point into worlds that speak of pain, survival and connection across generations and divides. The complexity of human experience rendered on minute scale brings home the poignancy of our vulnerability and resilience. Olga Speakes

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Sundus Saad

18/08/2026

ON SHOW | a little show

Visit ‘a little show’ at our Cape Town gallery as we showcase a group presentation of miniature artworks.

A Little Show embraces modesty - not as a lack of ambition but as a deliberate curatorial position. It suggests that small gestures, quiet moments, and delicately considered works can accumulate into something meaningful, even powerful. Rather than make grand statements the exhibition proposes that attention to the intimate and the overlooked can reveal a much larger picture.

The premise for this assembly of smaller scale artworks comes from the desire to understand, and even to give in to, the urge to scale down, to pause, to step away from the massive and the gigantic, not just in art and architecture, but in wider experiences of everyday life, in local and international politics, in our relationship with the natural world. - Olga Speakes

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Participating artists:
Leila Abrahams
Luiza Cachalia
Nicholas Hales
Collen Maswanganyi
Sundus Saad
Marlene Steyn
Simon Stone
Frans Thoka

13/08/2026

ON SHOW | a little show

A preview of Marlene Steyn’s artworks on show at our month long group exhibition titled ‘a little show’ at SMAC Cape Town.

Miniatures and small scale artworks included in this exhibition, whether sculptures or paintings, invite close looking and handling, establishing a level of intimacy and trust between the artist and the viewer. They evoke a sense of nostalgia, an ephemeral link to one’s own story or to idealized past held in objects and memory. Luiza Cachalia and Marlene Steyn continue to explore the complexities of their subjects’ inner worlds while successfully balancing the economy of means that the smaller format demands of them. The sense of intimacy is heightened through close looking and so is the feeling of reward for following the artists into labyrinths of their imagination. - Olga Speakes

Marlene Steyn

___
backchat | 2026 | Oil on Canvas | 40 x 30 cm
Mixed singles | 2026 | Oil on Canvas Board | 40 x 30 cm
growing horizontal | 2026 | Oil on Canvas Board | 45 x 35 cm

03/08/2026

UPCOMING | A LITTLE SHOW

Join us this First Thursday for ‘a little show’, a group presentation of small works from 18h00 on Thursday, 6 August, at SMAC Gallery, 25 Church Street, Cape Town, City Centre.

‘a little show’ runs in conjunction with the 2026 HEAT Winter Arts Festival Heat Winter Arts Festival

Frans Thoka | Lenong (Detail) | 2025 | Charcoal, Gouache and Ink on Fabriano | 27 x 37.5 cm

Participating artist include:
Nina Torr
Leila Abrahams
Sundus Saad
Frans Thoka
Collen Maswanganyi
Luiza Cachalia
Nicholas Hales
Marlene Steyn
Simon Stone

01/07/2026

ARTIST FOCUS | WALLEN MAPONDERA

Wallen Mapondera was born in 1985 in Harare, Zimbabwe, where he currently lives and works. Mapondera completed his Masters Degree in Fine Art at Rhodes University in Makhanda, South Africa in 2019. He was awarded the National Gallery of Zimbabwe Artist-in-Residence Programme, hosted at the National Gallery School of Visual Arts and Design Studios in Harare in 2007, and the Artist-in-Residence programme at the Vermont Studio Center, Burlington in Vermont, USA in 2012. In 2015 he was the recipient of Zimbabwe’s prestigious National Arts Merit Award, presented by the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe.

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Wallen Mapondera

26/06/2026

LUIZA CACHALIA | GILDED

In her paintings, Cachalia flattens the cinematic portrayal of these characters rather than reanimating them. Her painting balances a tension between control and chaos. Thin washes of colour define mask-like skin compared with the impasto representation of embroidery, make-up and cigarette smoke. The drawn line structure of her figures is often left exposed with painted elements held in a balance between line and form. This act of exposing the artifice of representation, of a resistance to precision, is used to alert us to moments of emotional instability and imperfection in these portrayals.
-Natasha Norman

Gilded by Luiza Cachalia remains on show at SMAC+ projects, Cape Town. Join us Tuesday - Friday from 10 AM - 5 PM and Saturdays from 10 AM - 3 PM.

65A Shortmarket St, Cape Town City Centre.

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Luiza Cachalia

19/06/2026

SIMON STONE | MOSAICS

Simon Stone began creating mosaics in 1990 after growing tired of looking at a bare wall on his property. He felt that simply painting the wall would not be a lasting solution, as paint would eventually fade. Inspired by mosaic works he had seen by Claude Vanderberg in Durban, Stone decided to explore the medium himself, marking the beginning of his journey into mosaic art.

Despite the intricate craftsmanship involved in his mosaic creations, Stone describes them primarily as a decorative aspect of his career rather than deeply emotional works. He explains that he sees mosaic as more design-oriented and does not necessarily classify it as fine art. However, considering the immense time, effort, manual labour, and the beauty of the compositions, one could certainly argue that his mosaics are indeed works of art.

Simon Stone

15/06/2026

ARTIST FOCUS | FRANCES GOODMAN

Frances Goodman critically engages with culturally established norms regarding beauty and femininity by reworking stereotypically gendered materials, such as sequins and acrylic nails, anchoring her practice in an exploration of these materials as valuable and disposable; hand-made and synthetic; culturally significant and passing trends.

Frances Goodman was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1975, where she currently lives and works.
Goodman obtained a Masters Degree in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths College at the University of London, United Kingdom in 2000, and holds a Laureateship from the Hoger Instituut Voor Schone Kunsten (HISK) in Antwerp, Belgium. She was a recipient of the Cecily Brown Fellowship for Outstanding Woman Artists in 2014 and took part in The Fountainhead Residency Programme in Miami, USA, in 2015; and Sundaymorning@ekwc Artist Residency in Oisterwijk, The Netherlands in 2021. In 2023, SMAC Gallery released a publication titled Through The Glass, Sparkling.

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Frances Goodman

Address

25 Church Street
Cape Town
8001

Opening Hours

Monday	09:00 - 17:00
Tuesday	09:00 - 17:00
Wednesday	09:00 - 17:00
Thursday	09:00 - 17:00
Friday	09:00 - 17:00
Saturday	10:00 - 15:00

Website

http://www.smacgallery.com/

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