I snuck into the Marlene Dumas press conference today, and was lucky enough not only to be one of the first people to see the show (making you the first person to read about it) but also to hear Dumas' lovely irreverent rants about the work (until she was gently and annoyingly stopped and steered outside by her gallerist).

The exhibition, Intimate Relations, is a retrospective of sorts of work from many of her major collections starting from her Michaelis student work to a recent series of portraits of the last photographs taken of suicide bombers (and her daughter's Moroccan boyfriend). It's hard not to gush about Dumas - after years of drippy drippy cool-kid paintings (referenced eloquently in Lizza's post) it's really great to see the grandmother of the both drip and wash exhibiting in Cape Town. Particularly since she's a really cool grandmother, with lime green shirt and frizzy blonde hair and an infectious enthusiasm that made her work even more exciting. Did I mention how much I love Marlene Dumas yet? Ok, so instead of gushing uselessly I would suggest to everyone that they go see the show.

Some of the paintings are very ugly, but these are actually some of my favourites and there's also some unexpected stuff like Don't Talk to Strangers a sort-of text piece from the 70's showing the beginnings and ends of letters to the artist.

It is very beautiful.