At Southern Guild, The Poets Are Working approaches Surrealism with a light but deliberate touch, treating it less as a historical movement and more as an ongoing way of thinking. Curated by Anna-Michelle Roux in collaboration with Strauss & Co and the Kilbourn Collection, the exhibition brings together works from across generations, allowing past and present to sit alongside one another in ways that feel considered rather than forced.
Anchored by historical figures such as Frederick Hutchison Page, Alexis Preller, Keith Alexander and Penny Siopis, the exhibition opens out into a broader conversation with contemporary artists including Zander Blom, Zanele Muholi, Manyaku Mashilo and Usha Seejarim. What emerges is not a strict narrative, but a series of echoes. Familiar surrealist ideas surface and shift across different contexts, shaped by place, material and lived experience.
The exhibition draws on Surrealism’s long-standing interest in the subconscious, the symbolic and the slightly uncanny, but keeps things grounded. There’s a sense that these strategies still hold weight, particularly now, when uncertainty and fragmentation feel less theoretical and more lived. Rather than revisiting Surrealism as a closed chapter, the show asks what it might look like when those ideas are reworked through a Southern African lens.
Several newly commissioned works extend this thinking. Nandipha Mntambo continues her exploration of the body through sculptural forms in treated cowhide, while Kamyar Bineshtarigh allows process and chance to guide his glue-based paintings. Jozua Gerrard and Justine Mahoney draw on more recognisable surrealist imagery, though their works feel more introspective than theatrical.
There are also quieter, more pointed gestures. Seejarim’s Ceci n’est vraiment pas une pipe (This is Definitely Not a Pipe) revisits René Magritte with a sense of play, translating a familiar art historical reference into something tactile and local. It’s a reminder that these ideas don’t need to feel distant or fixed. They can be reworked, questioned and made relevant again.
The exhibition’s title recalls a phrase cited by André Breton, who described the poet Saint-Pol-Roux placing a sign on his door each evening reading “The poet is working.” The title gestures towards this sense of ongoing process and if anything, The Poets Are Working feels less like a statement and more like an open-ended conversation across materials, histories and perspectives.
The Poets Are Working opens on April 16 and will run until July 2 2026 at Southern Guild Gallery Cape Town. The exhibition will run concurrently alongside two solo presentations by Southern Guild associated artists, including Gold Ships by Daniel Levi (16 April – 23 May 2026), followed by How to Like It by Lucy Robson (28 May – 9 July 2026).
