Join Addis in Cape this First Thursdays for a celebration of Ethiopian flavours for just R225 per person.

Enjoy a grand platter of six traditional Ethiopian dishes, accompanied by three delicious sides and served with injera.

Available in mixed and vegan options.

Stay a little longer and enjoy a refreshing cocktail or glass of wine during our extended happy hour on selected drinks.

Enjoy the live concert at Greenmarket Square, then pop into Klok to explore Khomotso Phetla’s collection of works and enjoy a complimentary glass of Seven Sisters wine.

Choreographies of the Unseen explores the space between what can be seen and what can be sensed: between movement and stillness, matter and energy, the known and the unknown.

Through abstraction, McMahon draws on her relationship with place and landscape, using the rhythms and interconnectedness of the natural world to explore intuition, memory and sensation, giving form to experiences that resist language.

Layering, mark-making, colour, line and thread become forms of wayfinding - tracing pathways between fragments, following what emerges and allowing meaning to develop through the act of making.

On view in AVA's Mezzanine Gallery until 26 November 26

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CHROMA brings together three distinct voices in contemporary African photography: Edwin Maina, Sanjo Lawal and Ed Suter.

Through bold colour, constructed compositions and distinctive visual languages, each photographer explores identity, representation and contemporary African perspectives.

The exhibition marks an exciting new chapter for Gallery F, expanding its programme to showcase contemporary African photography alongside its established collection of historically significant photographic works.

With CHROMA, Gallery F continues its commitment to celebrating African photography, connecting audiences with exceptional artists and introducing collectors to fresh perspectives from across the continent.

Nola Muller
Reviewing her first exhibition in 1978 for the Argus Eldred Green described Nola as ‘Hedonist (who) takes pleasure in her environment’.  Expanding on his apt observation Nola says:
‘I am still living a playful life between the ocean and the mountains of the Cape Peninsula. From a young age I was fascinated by the creatures in the intertidal coastal rock pools at Dalebrook and equally awed by the towering mountains above Kirstenbosch.
My creative talent was fueled by being in the sea as a ‘Longboarder’ from the 1960’s. I learnt about the moods of a breaking wave. It was a fortunate lifestyle also hiking through our magnificent fynbos on the slopes of the Table Mountain National Park.
Observation translates into my interpretation of painting the elements ,floral colours and dramatic structure of boulders and rocks.
Subjects that don’t require distortion but familiar rendering in both watercolours and oils.
If I pull up to the roadside on Chapmans Peak Pass, it is not because of a puncture, it is because I so often stop on my bicycle to observe the foamy pulse between the sea and the cliffs.
So it is in a full circle that I come back to painting ‘familiar places. “

Michele Koch
‘My hands are happiest when they are in clay’ says Michele.  Her handmade ceramics fired to stoneware temperatures are designed to bring a sense of occasion to an event; she decorates the surface of her pottery with imprinted messages, lace or horsehair, sealing memories in stoneware through the process of firing.

5pm: Explore the Labyrinth

5.30pm – 6.15pm: Marimba Session

Join the St George’s MEF Marimba Team for a fun, engaging and interactive session featuring popular and traditional songs, led by Colleen Hart of The Marimba Education Foundation (www.mef.org.za).

6.15pm – 6.45pm: Change Ringing Experience

Join the St George’s Cathedral Guild of Change Ringers and discover a centuries-old British art form: ringing full-circle tower bells in South Africa’s oldest active ringing tower. Led by Mark JF Ogilvie (mogilvie@iafrica.com).

6.45pm – 8pm: Choir Rehearsal

Immerse yourself in the transcendent sound of the choir in rehearsal, led by Organist and Master of the Choristers, Grant Bräsler (grant@sgcathedral.co.za).

@YourLocalBrew_CT will be serving your favourite cup on the steps throughout the evening!

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The City of Cape Town's Emerging Artists Programme (EAP) continues to support early-career visual artists by providing opportunities to develop their professional practice, increase public visibility, and gain practical exhibition experience. During the 2026 Spring/Summer season, the programme will present a series of curated First Thursdays Pop-Up Exhibitions, each preceded by a comprehensive Exhibition Readiness Workshop that equips participants with the knowledge and skills required to professionally prepare, curate, market and present their work. Following each First Thursdays event, the exhibition will be relocated to the Cape Town Central Public Library, where it will remain on public display for up to two weeks, providing participating artists with extended exposure and additional opportunities to engage with audiences and generate artwork sales. Through this combined approach, the programme enables emerging artists to exhibit and sell their work, build professional networks, strengthen their business skills, and contribute to the long-term sustainability of their creative practice.

Want to know your blood group?

Visit the Western Cape Blood Donor Centre between 4pm and 6pm for a free blood group test and find out instantly.

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Using Hindu scripture, history and visual culture as a lens, brothers Kiveshan and Daneel Thumbiran explore belonging on both a micro level, as South African Indians navigating post-democratic South Africa, and a macro level, as individuals negotiating their place in the wider world.

Kiveshan’s large cardboard sculptures reimagine Hindu idols as companions and points of encounter, while Daneel’s mixed-media works become repositories of identity and a means of processing the world around him. Together, their practices form a dialogue between identity, culture and belonging, bringing two perspectives together in an attempt to understand where they come from, where they stand and where they belong.

On view in AVA’s Main Gallery until 26 November 2026.

Kindly supported by the City of Cape Town.

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Mosey on Down is an exhibition by Cape Town-based engineer, entrepreneur and self-taught artist Timo Osse.

Working with acrylic paint on the underside of upholstery off-cuts, Osse creates imagined landscapes inspired by personal experiences, memories of walking through Cape Town and travels abroad.

Exploring themes of connection, curiosity and everyday wonder, his paintings bring urban environments and nature together in playful, dreamlike worlds. The exhibition invites visitors to slow down, look closer and discover unexpected connections between places, memories and imagination.

Join Alliance Française du Cap for the official opening this First Thursdays. Free entry.

EBONY/CURATED presents Nuisance Dust, the latest solo exhibition by Hugh Byrne. Bringing together a new body of non-figurative works, 'Nuisance Dust' considers colour, structure and material through Byrne’s intuitive studio practice. Working responsively, Byrne allows each composition to develop through a negotiation between spontaneity and restraint.

Byrne’s studio is integral to this process. Tools, materials, discarded elements and fragments of earlier works become points of departure, forming a visual language shaped as much by accumulated experience as by immediate gesture. The resulting works are marked by a measured tension between order and disruption, with colour and form in constant adjustment to one another.

Vela Projects presents Pour, an exhibition of new ceramic sculptures by Dominic Pretorius.

Pour traces the transition between states. There is the alchemy proper to the artist’s medium, the mud of clay transfigured by fire into mineral permanence. There is the despondent darkness with which Dominic first embarked on shaping the works included in this exhibition, and the candescent clarity that marks its resolution. And there is then that more subtle shift, which sanctifies ordinary attention and action, recasts the repeated gesture as ritual.

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With School of Explorative Architecture's move to its new Hope Street location in the Cape Town CBD, we explore how engaging with the urban edge can activate user experience and engagement. Come and enjoy an evening of discussion and sketching of ideas, whilst enjoying a refreshment and looking through the exhibition of the 2nd and 3rd year students Competition Elective Submissions.

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Fascinated by architecture in constant transition, from structures emerging in raw steel to those quietly yielding to decay, Sky Cities examines the relationship between time, shelter, and an evolving planet. Prompted by the climate threats reshaping our world, the artist looks to the future, imagining where humanity will gather when the ground shifts.

Drawing on an archive of architectural photographs, Rust transforms buildings into fictional floating structures and spacecraft, retaining digital flaws and glitches as markers of human vulnerability. Translated into cyanotype prints, these imagined skyscapes exist between past, present, and future, bridging memory and speculation while reflecting on how our unstable future has been shaped by the environments we alter, the materials we discard, and the futures we choose to imagine.

On view in AVA's Front Gallery until 26 November 26

Kindly supported by the City of Cape Town.

Join 1895 Gallery for the opening of a solo exhibition by artist Diane Webb at Central Methodist Church on Thursday, 5 November 2026, from 5:30pm to 8pm.

The exhibition will be on display until 14 November 2026.

Norman O’Flynn’s recent paintings are rooms without people. They are filled with the things we choose to live with: books, sculptures, works by artists such as Lichtenstein, Haring and Kaws, and superhero figurines from childhood. Yet the chairs are always empty. We never see the occupants. We only get to know them through what they have chosen to put on display.

In HIP TO THE CAUSE, that quiet act of display takes on a sharper edge. Today the objects, slogans and symbols we surround ourselves with are no longer just a matter of taste. They have become statements of allegiance. We support causes, share them and wear them, often less out of conviction than out of a need to be seen on the right side. Social media rewards this performance and punishes nuance. It steadily pushes us into opposing camps, where there is little room for doubt, debate or middle ground.

O’Flynn’s rooms read like carefully curated profiles, with every item placed to signal who lives there and what they stand for. He leaves out walls and ceilings, so these private spaces are never sealed off from the world outside, and ideas, opinions and pressures flow freely in and out. His technique adds to the effect. He paints in reverse on the back of acrylic glass, so each image is seen through a glossy, reflective surface, much like the screens through which we now encounter one another.

Pop art has always borrowed the language of advertising and mass culture. O’Flynn uses the same bright, instantly recognisable vocabulary to hold up a mirror to a culture where being seen to care can matter more than caring.

There’s nothing quite like summer in Cape Town. The days are longer, the weather is warmer, and there’s a buzz around the city as we gear up for another busy festive season.

And what better way to get into the spirit than with First Thursdays at Bo-Vine?

Expect great food, good wine, a lively atmosphere and more than one reason to order another round for the table.

Join Bo-Vine for First Thursdays in the City.

Tell me what you see around you is a brand new trio-show featuring the work of Michael Bräuer, Nazeer Jappie and Olivia Botha. Here, the paintings of Jappie and Botha are paired with sculptural wall pieces of Michael Bräuer. The exhibition is on display at 99 Loop Gallery until Saturday, 28 November.

The exhibition marks Dass’s first solo presentation with the gallery, presenting an ambitious, transdisciplinary project centred on the quiet labour of remembering.

Borrowed from Kiran Desai’s 2006 novel of the same name, the title captures Dass’s approach to loss as a consequence of historical rupture. Responding to various forms of epistemic injustice, the exhibition explores memory as a form of inheritance that requires active engagement to endure.

This process of remembering is reflected in the treatment of family archives and found objects. Family photographs, domestic textiles and everyday objects become vessels for histories that have survived not because they remained intact, but because they have been carefully tended to across generations.

Join Lemkus Gallery this First Thursdays.

28 St George’s Mall, 4th Floor
6pm - 8pm

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In Through it, Mandy Johnston explores the divided human experience of existing simultaneously as both physical and conceptual beings, using artmaking as a means of processing observations about society and life’s transitions.

Reflecting on the decline of traditional rites of passage, her work considers the loss of opportunities for ancestral knowledge to be passed down with communal support. Through water, light, shadow and fire, Johnston examines movement, transformation and the unseen dimensions of internal journeys, inviting conversations about how we might better support one another through periods of change.

On view in AVA's Long Gallery until 26 November 26

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Susan Orpen moved to the Cape from Gauteng, where she was a well-known professional artist and teacher. In Rondebosch, she was delighted to discover a small group of women eager to learn watercolour painting. And so, at the end of 2023, the Tuesday Group was born in Cheryl Bauer’s Maidstone Studio.

The group has since grown into a full class, with members sharing the delights and frustrations of working in watercolour. Not only has their artistic expertise grown, but they have also formed strong bonds. Tea breaks are filled with animated discussions about books, art, hiking, baking, gardening, fynbos and life’s experiences.

Teaching art to older students is particularly gratifying, as it is often something they have wanted to do all their lives but have been too busy with careers and families to pursue. Painting is a skill that can bring satisfaction and pleasure for a lifetime, while adding an extra dimension to holidays. Have paintbox and brush, will travel!

For some of the artists in the Tuesday Group, this is their very first exhibition. Their work reflects their responses to the world around them, as well as their growing mastery of the demanding techniques of watercolour.

Step into Wonderland: First Thursdays at The Grand Daddy Boutique Hotel.

“We’re all mad here!” This First Thursdays, The Grand Daddy Boutique Hotel invites you to fall down the rabbit hole for an unforgettable evening inspired by the mischievous and whimsical world of the Cheshire Cat.

Join them for an exciting First Thursdays experience bringing creativity and flavour together, featuring:

• Rooftop Rhythms & Grins: Live music on the rooftop with Thabo and the Crows.
• Curious Creations: An art exhibition by the incredible Kunye Art Foundation.
• A Touch of Madness: Live flash tattoos inside the iconic Beach House Airstream.
• Alice’s Appetite: Gourmet treats at Grand Deli Eats, featuring fresh oysters and gourmet desserts for sale.
• The Cheshire Potion: A special collaboration with Bangbroek Drinks Company, introducing the exclusive Broekdropper cocktail.
• Wonderland Flavours: A full bar and signature bar bites, served the Grand Daddy way.

From rooftop rhythms and creative expression to unique cocktails and delicious bites, there’s something for everyone. Bring your friends, explore the art, grab a drink and make a night of it. Cape Town’s creative spirit meets the Grand Daddy’s signature style!

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What happens when form refuses to follow the rules?

Bringing together Hussein Salim, Yasmine Yacoubi, Helen van Stolk and Ayobola “Zak” Kekere-Ekun, Wild Syntax explores abstraction as a disruption of familiar ways of seeing. Through colour, gesture, texture and material, the artists construct visual languages that resist fixed meanings and conventional representation.

Salim’s layered compositions draw on cultural memory and diasporic identity. Yacoubi and van Stolk translate encounters with the natural world into expressive arrangements of colour and movement, while Kekere-Ekun transforms fabric into sculptural terrains shaped by folds, tension and the traces of lived experience.

Each practice operates according to its own internal logic, where structure meets spontaneity and order gives way to possibility. Together, the works challenge the expectation that art must be legible, contained or easily explained.

Here, abstraction is not an absence of meaning, but a language in the making, unruly, instinctive and unapologetically open to interpretation.

The Mission for Inner City Cape Town is bringing Zolani Mahola and The Feminine Force, with special guest Soana, to Greenmarket Square on 5 November. This is a free concert with food trucks & a night market, so bring your friends & family, grab some street food from Bigga D's, Ardi's, Herenity or Holy Macaroni and enjoy an evening on the square.

6pm - Soana

6.45pm - Zolani Mahola

8pm till late - DJ line up

FREE TO PUBLIC EVENT