Deborah Bell has been working for four years on the large body of work on show at the Everard Read Galleries in Cape Town and Johannesburg, and at David Krut Projects. The scope is dazzling, incorporating sculpture, painting and printmaking. The most arresting work is The Return of the Gods: the Ancient Ones, a sculpture comprising five giant figures. For each figure, South African composer Phillip Miller created a voice or sound which is activated when you walk though the gallery.These messengers from other worlds are a familiar part of Bell's oeuvre. She has long used art as a kind of meditation, what she calls "transformation through the act of making".In these exhibitions Bell explores ancient and angelic figures. You can also see references to Michelangelo's Creation of Adam - and the theme of creation, art and spirituality inspires thoughts of Picasso mediating Velázquez.You only have to stand in front of her works to feel their undeniable sense of stillness, presence and power. H er interaction with her materials is as much a contemporary concern as the tension between the present moment and the eternal is ancient. Bell's works capture the paradox of the eternal and the "now", and the secrets of creativity .Dreams of Immortality is at the Everard Read Gallery in Johannesburg until June 27, and in Cape Town until June 15. Renunciation, Bell's exhibition of etchings, will show at David Krut Projects until June 12...