The aim of 'Nation State', Goodman Gallery Cape's April show, is to engage with ideas surrounding the construction of nation and state. This is both with reference to the tools of national construction, as well as the tensions experienced by the public. The curators Liza Essers and Storm Janse van Rensburg elected to source a variety of media to navigate this complex terrain. Works range from video, photography and print to collage, sculpture and installation. The interplay between artists from South Africa and abroad allows the works to speak to a wider sensibility, rather than becoming another South African history lesson.

Due to the current political climate in South Africa certain works have a level of poignancy that cannot be ignored. Election time makes the demographic complexity of a country's political landscape fully evident. Art collective Doing it for Daddy's Nation State (2009) examines the particular approach of various political groups. This mixed media installation plays on the idea of a political rally; it features a set of chairs, a podium (complete with a half drank glass of water), a table with badges and blank leaflets that viewers can take away, and a video projection of the slogans of most of the local political parties. The co-option of these slogans has a disconcerting effect, primarily because the removal from their original context does not void their coercive intent. The work becomes suggestive of an amalgamated political machine that we are invited to join, and some viewers can't seem to resist the urge to sit down and watch the show.

A similar tone is inherent in the Political Posters of Kudzanai Chiurai, produced in 2008 as a response to the Zimbabwean political crisis. Phrases like 'we always have reason to fear', 'shopping for democracy' and 'vote at your own risk' accompany the equally poignant images. One would be hard pressed to forget the intensity of the violence and intimidation that accompanied the Zimbabwean elections. What does change, however, is the place that these images occupy within our imagination and their social context . It's not as if these posters are being placed on the streets, or being waved around by frustrated residents in angry protests. The posters function as reflective of the events that preceded them, yet also fill in the gaps after their creation. This is something that makes these silkscreen prints hover somewhere between satire and political comment.

Sue Williamson's 1998 Truth Games ' Graca Machel ' Provoked Disaster ' Magnus Malan (1998) and Truth Games ' Linpho Hani ' No Remorse ' Gail Derby-Lewis (1998) are similarly affected by their production date and the placement in the current exhibition. Both works feature various photographs and phrases culled from the press coverage of politically embroiled incidents. There is an element of subversive playfulness in Williamson's engagement with these fragments of mediated information. The fact that the text in each image can be shifted along the horizontal frame provides the possibility to reveal, conceal or re-frame each separate piece of the puzzle.

There is something to be said for the particular role that text plays in this exhibition, and this is not only in reference to the aforementioned three works. In Stuart Bird's RSA (2009) the words 'for sale' are lit in bright red neon light, echoing a long art historical trajectory of subversive engagement with the language of commercial enterprise, as well as the invitation to partake in the stock on display. In the context of Bird's previous works one might even venture that it is a possible swipe at the South African government's refusal to grant the Dalai Lama a Visa, in the light of its allegiance to its Chinese investors.

Hank Willis Thomas's Hopeless Hopeful (2009) also taps into the mutable nature of language, by demonstrating how meaning can become ambiguous through a simple change of a suffix. Through the use of a lenticular image (which suggests movement relative to one's physical position), Thomas manages to effectively allude to the fragility of both emotional states. In this sense the work steps out of itself and speaks not only to the physical space around it, but perhaps to a broader understanding of the current worldwide economic crisis.

The photographic works included in the exhibition explore ideas surrounding military presence, security and boundaries more explicitly. Taysir Batniji's Mirador (2006) initiates this conversation through its triple focus on military watchtowers. Its claustrophobic installation at the gallery entrance makes one additionally aware of being under surveillance. Mikhael Subotzky meanwhile, in works such as Street Party, Saxonwold (2008) presents images of social gatherings that echo ideas surrounding the enforcement of borders through various manifestations of private and public security and public concerns of disenfranchisement.

At an interstice between the ways the other works function and the terrain mapped out by this show is Kader Attia's video work Oil and Sugar #2 (2007). The work presents a square composed of individual cubes of sugar being eroded by the addition of oil. There is something visceral in the way the three tiers of sugar collapse and become suggestive of a wide range of social, political and economic issues. There is a clever play with materiality through the use of video, which is in itself quite an unsympathetic and complex medium to employ effectively.

Sam Nhlengethwa's Glimpses from the 50's and 60's (2003) is a collection of 30 collages that provide a keen insight into the various facets of life in South Africa during that time period. These range from the inside of a shebeen, miners working underground, images of children playing, the Sharpeville massacre, pass raids and protests. The attention to a wide variety of events makes this work shift from a nostalgic framework to a more open-ended reflective sphere. Life under a specific political system is mapped out through collages and painted elements to provide impact points on both the artist's person and the larger body of the public.

What remains crucial is not to fall into the trap of tying everything to a political position or message, because the works are really about a conversation with the political. Even though the artists engage such a complex terrain, the works traverse the area without becoming subsumed by it.

What is of particular interest is that in a majority of cases these works have been culled from larger bodies of production. Within the gallery space each artwork echoes elements from another, whether it is the colour, the tone, the theme, the geographical focus or the materiality. 'Nation State' draws these works together through a well considered combination of ideas and manages to fit these separate voices together quite coherantly.

Opens: April 7
Closes: May 2

Fabian Saptouw is a Master's student at Michaelis

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Images courtesy Goodman Gallery Cape and the Artists.