What are the 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

SMAC Gallery

Home
South Africa
Cape Town
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.

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.

Request a portfolio via DM or at [email protected]

Frances Goodman

10/06/2026

ON SHOW | NICHOLAS HALES | SHODHANA (PURIFICATION)

Shodhana (purification) by Nicholas Hales is currently on show at SMAC gallery Cape. Join us Monday–Friday from 9 AM–5 PM and Saturdays from 10 AM–2 PM.

Nicholas Hales is an artist invested in the quiet and sustained practice of investigating the self. As a painter, he draws from the outcomes of this meditative process in order to produce layered and abstract works that resound with a contemplative stillness.

For Hales, painting is both a process of looking inward, and a way of opening up space for others to do the same. It is this dual process that’s at the centre of Shodhana (purification), the artist’s latest collection of paintings on exhibition at SMAC gallery.

- David Mann

Request a portfolio via DM or at [email protected]

09/06/2026

MARLENE STEYN | ARTIST FOCUS

Marlene Steyn (b. 1989, Cape Town, South Africa) lives and works in Cape Town. She obtained a Master of Fine Arts from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2014, following a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art (MA) from Stellenbosch University, South Africa.

For Steyn, the surrealists have served as major inspirations since she was in art school. Over time, she has developed her own repertoire of distinctive symbols, referencing objects that are familiar to her own everyday life: ci******es, cocktail lemons, socks. Like the surrealists, hers is a “world is broken, but broken beautifully.” This is a question to which the artist often returns during the months that it takes to complete a painting: “How can I break her open?”

- Keely Shinners

Request a portfolio via DM or at [email protected]

04/06/2026

ARTIST FOCUS | ROSIE MUDGE

‘I work with materials that I find resonant - from nail polish, glitter, YouTube clips and silly string to resin, automotive paint, and glitter glue.’

Rosie Mudge was born in 1988 in Knysna and currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. She obtained her BAFA with distinction from the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town in 2013.

Through her shimmering, evocative paintings, Mudge investigates themes of materiality, gender and intimacy. She subverts the feminised ideas of glitter, as being reserved for superficial love notes or personal reflections in journals. Mudge instead treats it with reverence - incorporating it into her imposing, enigmatic works.

Request a portfolio via DM or at [email protected]

03/06/2026

ARTIST FOCUS | LEDELLE MOE

Ledelle Moe (b. 1971, Durban) is a Cape Town-based sculptor who investigates permanence, dislocation, and the politics of place. Travelling to specific sites, she collects earth and incorporates it as aggregate in cement, using local soil to open conversations about land, identity, and the ways political and personal histories are rooted in place. Her work has been shown internationally at institutions including MASS MoCA, Massachusetts; Semaphore Gallery, Neuchâtel; and Kirk Hopper Fine Art, Dallas.

Moe travels to specific places, digging into the soil and embedding it into the cement forms she sculpts. Her work reflects on landscape as ground and on how the land holds memory, inviting us to consider how deeply our sense of self is shaped by the landscapes we come from. There is healing, she suggests, in slowing down and sitting with the questions that surface when we do: where have we come from, where are we now, and what lies ahead.

Request a portfolio via DM or at [email protected]

01/06/2026

ON SHOW | LUIZA CACHALIA | GILDED

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

Luiza Cachalia has long understood that cultural residue shapes our personal understandings of gender. Her interest in the societal constructs of womanhood recognises Simone de Beauvoir’s assertion that femininity is consistently shaped as a site of ‘Other’ in relation to men such that femininity is defined as an object rather than a self. Where Cachalia’s earlier works meditated on those women who defied the system, who became heroines of hysteria and abject cruelty in defiance of the patriarchy, in Gilded she has turned her gaze to those who inhabit the glittering cage, whose rage within the system of patriarchal signifiers is coolly sold back to them as aspirational lifestyle.

- ⁠Natsaha Norman

Request a portfolio via DM or at [email protected]

27/05/2026

ON SHOW | SMISO CELE | TO SHORE UP THE WORLD

To Shore Up the World by Smiso Cele is currently on show at SMAC gallery Cape. Join us Monday–Friday from 9 AM–5 PM and Saturdays from 10 AM–3 PM.

In To Shore Up The World, the spade is bent, broken, and welded back together again to form a distorted, surreal and non-functional version of itself. His sculptures are simple and affecting – black spades that have been extended and warped, placed on wooden bases made to follow their snaking paths. Sometimes, they adorn the walls, hanging as they might in a toolshed, but truncated or elongated, casting odd shapes on the wall. The shape of the common earthworm, an essential character in gardening because of its role in soil fertilisation, is a source of inspiration for the twisting and turning of these spades.

Orbiting and interwoven with these works are Cele’s works on paper. Layered, textured, and engaging, these mixed-media works on handmade paper can be seen as roadmaps or schematics to Cele’s sculptures, but also to the self. Delicate, considered lines cut neat paths through palimpsestic patterns, sharing space with handwritten notes and self-portraits. Exhibited here alongside his sculptures, the prints provide an exploded view of the artist’s research and speculation – a process of simultaneous surfacing and expansion.

Request a portfolio via DM or at [email protected]

21/05/2026

MARELI LAL | BEHIND THE LENS

Behind the scenes of Mareli Lal’s most recent body of work, After Hours. Through a clean contemporary aesthetic, carefully staged mundane objects, and deliberate manipulation of space, Lal transforms the banal into the extraordinary, revealing the beauty and absurdity hidden within ordinary moments.

Request a portfolio of all available works via DM or via [email protected]

19/05/2026

ON SHOW | NICHOLAS HALES | SHODHANA (PURIFICATION)

Shodhana (purification) by Nicholas Hales is currently on show at SMAC gallery Cape. Join us Monday–Friday from 9 AM–5 PM and Saturdays from 10 AM–3 PM.

Through his considered use of colour, soft gradients, and choice linework, Hales’ work opens up space for continued reflection, self-awareness and the surfacing of emotion.

The paintings in Shodhana (purification) avoid neat interpretation, and are the result of a process that embraces the incidental, the spiritual, and the immaterial without veering into entropy or ambiguity. At the core of the Cape Town-based artist’s practice is a balance between vulnerability and structure, colour and form. Most often, Hales works with acrylics and oils – an intuitive and meditative process of layering and mark-making.

- David Mann

Request a portfolio via DM or at [email protected]

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/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when SMAC Gallery posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Museum

Send a message to SMAC Gallery:

Shortcuts

Want your museum to be the top-listed Museum in Cape Town?