'History(n)'

Nelson Mandela is featured three times: once in a poignant photo by press photographer Alan Taylor, listed as the first taken after Mandela was released from jail; once as a carved and painted wooden figure with a child in his arms (one of three, along with two emblematic colonialists, Jan van Riebeeck and Cecil John Rhodes in a sparky triumverate titled Winner Takes All carved by Zimbabwean artist Richard Chauke); and finally, and perhaps most movingly, in a scratchy recording of the speech from the dock before receiving the sentence which put Mandela in prison for 27 years.

The speech emanates from an old radiogram console, of the same fifties era as the Rivonia trial. The irony is, of course, that in its day that speech would never have been heard over the state-controlled airwaves of the South African Broadcasting Corporation. The radiogram is part of a multi-media installation by Wayne Barker entitled Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, and as conceptually the strongest element in the installation could perhaps have been allowed to stand alone.

A fourth place one might have expected to find an image of Mandela is as the central design feature of the printed cotton kanga displayed by Kenyan artist Catherine Ocholla. Instead, the face at the centre is Michael Jackson’s, and the artist’s decision to put this piece on this show questions the real contribution of Michael Jackson to Africa. As he grew whiter and whiter her childhood admiration waned.

The valueless currency of Zimbabwe as a symbol of the disastrous economy of that country has been the subject of work by various artists in recent years. However, Maria van Rooyen’s The Smoke That Thunders, a representation of the Victoria Falls, constructed from hundreds of flaps of paper with shades of grey and black made from rubbings of old Zimbabwean and Rhodesian coins, has as many shades of colonial meaning as any. It satisfies both conceptually and visually.

Lamprecht’s catalogue text refers to the ‘genius’ of his artists. I wouldn’t go as far as that, but as a coherent work of curation, with fine works on display that raise issues on many aspects of contemporary history in Africa, 'History(n)' had a lot going for it.