On show: Two local must-see art exhibitions this month

1. SEWEDI SEWEDI BY BONOLO KAVULA | SMAC GALLERY, CAPE TOWN

Bonolo Kavula describes herself as an experimental artist, and an advocate of simplicity and minimalism. The Kimberley-born multi-disciplinary artist is opening her first solo exhibition, "sewedi sewedi" at Smac Gallery in Cape Town this weekend.

The artist lives and works in Cape Town and has a BA(FA) from the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town, majoring in printmaking.

In 2014, she awarded the Katherine Harries Print Cabinet Award at UCT and some of her art forms part of the Works of Art Committee collection at the University of Cape Town and the Iziko National Art Gallery.

She finds inspiration in Expressionism, Cubism, Dadaism and particularly in '60s minimalism and conceptual art. As she told Gary Cotterell in Wanted Magazine, "I looked at Robert Rauschenberg, who used print in a very experimental way. He had this famous work where he ran a tyre print on this long piece of paper. Joseph Kosuth was clever in his use of words and objects that you can just pick up anywhere. What I learnt from them is that anything can be art; it's what you make of it."

• "sewedi sewedi" will be on show at Smac Gallery, Cape Town, until April 17.

2. INVITATION BY CRAIG SMITH | KALASHNIKOVV, JOBURG

Craig Smith's third solo exhibition starts this weekend.

His new body of work, "Invitation", features new paintings on paper and on canvas and builds on the artist's interest in the use of concrete and other unconventional painting techniques. Smith began a career in photography in 1981, assisting the top commercial and fashion photographers in Johannesburg at the time. In 1987 he started working as a scenic artist in film and produced private commissions. This was the beginning of his relationship with paint.

Smith says his recent works come from the comparative irrelevance of modern life, which one notices when reality is suspended for a moment and all the background noise and visual clutter fades away.

Says art writer Robyn Sassen: "There is something here that touches the nexus of what it is to make paintings in a way that is un-obvious and clean of artifice. It's a genre and an approach which tosses protocol to the wind and takes abstraction to its nth degree, pulling you urgently but quietly by the strings of gentle striations, fine lines and the guttural flow of ink or toner tossed at apparent random on a raw canvas."

• "Invitation" will be on show at Kalashnikovv, Joburg, until March 23.