'Signature Works on Paper'

This travelling exhibition from the London-based Inky Cuttlefish collective consists largely of the work of London print-makers, with the most notable exception being Anna Alcock, who heads the collective, and who studied fine art in Pietermaritzburg. Like many group shows at artSPACE Durban and elsewhere, there is little to connect the various bodies of work and the quality of the work varies – something which is thrown a little sideways by the inclusion of two mentally handicapped artists in the show.

 I particularly liked Carl Harris’ messily-rendered prints of a boy casting the shadow of a cat, the poppy intimacy of some of Nick Morley's prints and Katherine Jones’ gorgeous permutations of a lit transparent structure in a forest. But this is the kind of show where there is invariably something for everyone, although there is little that moves in the direction of the transcendent, at least not within the limited format of a group exhibition.

In artSPACE's middle gallery, Alcock is given the expanded space of a solo show, and reveals herself to be a master printmaker with an almost ludicrously eclectic range of expression and technique. But while the exhibition represents her skills efficiently, it is essentially a portfolio show that consequently lacks rhythm and narrative. One of Alcock's frequent motifs involves a kind of dervish or spirit – that is visually resonant of imagery from Southern African printmaking – which haunts the city of London. It's a useful image for the energy that so many South Africans are throwing into the British capital, adding their own particular layer to the global yet determinedly English city, while at the same time functioning as a comment on the ghosts that lay beneath London's role as the former colonial centre of the world.