Exhibitions NOW SHOWING
Temporary Exhibitions
21 August – 16 October 2025
Explore the many meanings of home through clay sculptures by children from the Three2Six project, Raku-fired vessels by Nina Shand & Kate Shand, images documenting refugee and migrant children’s experiences (Three2Six and Alliance Francaise), and Windybrow Arts Centre’s reimagined Victorian dollhouse. The exhibition blends art therapy and arts-based approaches to migration, in collaboration with Nereida- Ripero Muñiz, to reflect on belonging, creativity and identity in a situation of displacement. New Additions: ‘Leaving No Child Behind’ – A powerful photo series by Three2Six & Alliance Française, shedding light on the lives of refugee and migrant children; ‘Doll’s Building and City Project’ – A reimagined Victorian doll’s house, transformed into a South African context by Windybrow Art Centre.
Activations of ‘The Meaning of Home’:
Workshop 1: My favourite things at home (Ages 4–8) | Origins Centre. R100 kids, R150 adults. Tickets on webtickets
6 September | 11:00–12:30 https://www.webtickets.co.za/performance.aspx...
Workshop 2: Inside and outside containers (Ages 9–12+) | Origins Centre. R100 kids, R150 adults. Tickets on webtickets
20 September | 11:00–12:30 https://www.webtickets.co.za/performance.aspx...
Panel Discussion: Art & Social Transformation
6 September| 13:00–14:00 (Lunchtime, venue TBC)
Enquiries: tammy.hodgskiss@wits.ac.za
For walkabouts and exhibition events, please check our social media.
Agitation
3 October 2025 – January 2026
The conversations in this exhibition include how we might best address water, energy and food insecurity; systematic injustices and the uneven distribution of resources; and impacts of climate change on the availability of and access to sufficient, reliable and safe water, energy and food. The artwork on display – videos, sculptures, photography and drawing - will include contributions from community artists and other artists in Makhanda and Johannesburg. For more information please go to https://www.ecoimagining.org/events/agitation-the-wef-nexus-and-climate-change-in-south-africa
Tickets on webtickets (R30/R60)
Imagine Visionary Animals, by Erla Haraldsdottir
17 October 2025 – 15 February 2026
The Origins Centre is excited to present a site-responsive temporary exhibition with Berlin and Johannesburg-based Icelandic artist Erla S. Haraldsdóttir. The exhibition is on the one hand informed by the hues of materials composing the physical exhibition space of the new wing, and on the other hand underscoring the museum’s core themes – cave paintings and rock engravings. This body of work departs from cave formations. By balancing photorealist and symbolic realism Haraldsdóttir returns to her longstanding investigations into how images can serve as portals – connecting cultural symbols, archetypes, and lived experience across time and place. Through this distinct form of ocular magical realism, the exhibition acknowledges stone surfaces as humankind’s original canvas through an interplay of colour, transparency, light, reflection, and spatial perception. Curated by Jonatan Habib Engqvist. Supported by The Icelandic Visual Arts Council, Erla S. Haraldsdóttir is a multidisciplinary visual artist whose work investigates the boundaries between personal memory, ancestral narrative, and collective myth. Using painting, drawing, printmaking, and collage, Haraldsdóttir draws on diverse visual languages, combining elements of figurative painting with experimental processes, often shaped by site, context, or archival material. Her practice frequently explores the transformative potential of colour and light, and the interplay between materiality and storytelling.
Enquiries: tammy.hodgskiss@wits.ac.za
Tickets on webtickets (R30/R40)
Permanent Exhibitions
The interactive exhibits at Origins Centre take visitors on an extraordinary journey of discovery, which begins with the origins of humankind in Africa and then moves through the development of technology, art, culture, and symbolism. The journey continues with an exploration of the diverse Southern African rock art traditions. These ancient masterworks, and the artists, are illustrated through contemporary art installations by well-known South African artists.
Our permanent exhibitions:
- Indigenous Gardens – edible and medicinal plants from different biomes that were used in the past and currently by ritual specialists throughout southern Africa.
- African Origins - Early African stone tools from 2.6 million years ago; the origins of humanity in Africa and what makes us human; The sands of time across the world; replica hominin skulls showing our human evolution over the last 7 million years
- The San and Rock Art - San and their Hunter-Gatherer past; San genocide and Sara Baartman; The eland in San belief; San painting technologies; The trance dance and how San ritual specialists enter the spirit world; rain making and neuropsychology; Interpreting a rock art panel.
- Rock Engraving Archive - Varied engraved rock art traditions & styles in Southern Africa. Can be explored through augmented reality (Download the app on Android or IOS – originscentrear)
- Conservation - Conservation problems facing rock art sites today and site etiquette
- Tapestry Room – Understanding and interpreting San Art; The history of the San told through 11 embroidered panels; The ‘White Lady of the Brandberg’
- Khoe Art - The geometric art found in southern Africa; Who are the Khoekhoen?
- Early (Iron Age) Farmers - The rise of complex societies, including information on Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe; Protest art of the Makgabeng
- Installations by contemporary artists – One Being by Deborah Glencross; World Map by Walter Oltman; Axis Mundi by Russel Scott; Synanthrope by Hannelie Coetzee; Signs of people by Willem Boshoff; Threads of knowing by Tamar Mason; Double Vision by Pippa Scotness & Malcolm Payne; Glass Beads by Martli Jansen van Rensburg.