THE exhibition at The Palms in Woodstock until July 15, Kevin Atkinson: Art and Life takes its title from the magnificent book of the same name, edited by Marilyn Martin and published in 2022. And, like the book, it situates Atkinson in relation to the important figures in his life – namely his family and his students – and celebrates his legacy.
Atkinson (1939-2007) was a powerful and inspirational force in South African art, both as a controversial artistic personality and academic. Although better known as a painter and printmaker, he experimented with sculpture, installation, land, and performance art.
He embraced a vast range of approaches to painting, moving from geometric abstractions in the 1960s, through the severe yet sensuous contrasts between geometric and organic form in the 1970s, to the forcefully expressionistic gestural works of the 1980s. A witty and incisive voice, Atkinson tried to address complex issues, ranging from the attitudes of American and European expressionist movements to writings on language, semiotics, phenomenology, and philosophy. He translated psychic energies into the visual language of a painted or drawn surface and remained an abstractionist and intermittent conceptualist till the end.
Unlike previous posthumous exhibitions that aimed to show the full trajectory of Atkinson’s prolific and multi-faceted output, this exhibition brings into view a smaller selection deemed by curators Jo-Anne Duggan and Joe Dolby to represent the best Atkinsons painting and drawings. The exhibition also brings into view the work of his late artist-educator wife, Patricia Pierce-Atkinson, not seen to this extent in the public domain since 1993; the work of a small group of former students who reunited in 2018; and works produced by participants in the Canvas Collaboration, a legacy project initiated by the Kevin and Patricia Atkinson Trust.
SMAC Gallery, First Floor, The Palms, 145 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock. For more information, call +27 (0)21 461 1029.
