South African Art Now until 06.01.07 Michael Stevenson´s Gallery, Cape Town

Michael Stevenson's annual exhibition of South African art is an unrivalled event on the collector's calendar, and this year will run throughout the holiday season. For the first time in 11 years, the exhibition will focus exclusively on the work of contemporary artists, in recognition of the increasingly high profile of the gallery's artists.

Among the major works on exhibition will be a huge shark-shaped drum by Samson Mudzunga, a performance piece and new mixed media works by Nicholas Hlobo, recent sculptures by Wim Botha, a large-scale wall painting with glass roundels by Conrad Botes, and Anton Kannemeyer's Alphabet of Democracy shown in its entirety for the first time. Photographic works include previously unseen photographs of the Congo's Mai Mai militia by Guy Tillim; Pieter Hugo's portraits of boy scouts in Monrovia, Liberia; recent colour South African landscapes by David Goldblatt and new portraits by Zanele Muholi. Mustafa Maluka, Deborah Poynton and Tracy Payne will all show new paintings.

Parallel to this is an exhibition of recent ceramics by Hylton Nel, whose idiosyncratic works are sought after by collectors across the world. This year he will be showing a series of plates which are wall-hung in particular patterns, inscribed with his characteristic quirky and polemical images and phrases. Also on exhibition will be new vases and small sculptures.

These exhibitions take place at the end of an extremely successful year for the gallery's artists. Among their achievements, David Goldblatt won the Hasselblad Prize for 2006; Guy Tillim was awarded the first Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography by Harvard University; Pieter Hugo was named the Standard Bank Young Artist for 2007; Churchill Madikida's 2006 Standard Bank Young Artist exhibition embarked on its national tour; Nicholas Hlobo won the Tollman Award for 2006 and Zanele Muholi was awarded the first BHP Billiton/Wits University Visual Arts Fellowship. Berni Searle has survey exhibitions at the Johannesburg Art Gallery and the Contemporary Art Museum at the University of South Florida in Tampa, USA. Tillim, Goldblatt and Wim Botha are included on the international touring exhibition Africa Remix which was seen in Tokyo and Stockholm this year. Conrad Botes showed on the Havana Biennale and Hugo, Tillim and Mustafa Maluka were selected for the São Paulo Bienal.