A prominent international gallery in Cape Town is facing allegations that it withheld artworks and delayed payments to artists. The claims were sparked by a now-deleted Instagram post from South African artist Kate Gottgens.
Earlier this month, Gottgens said in the post that her former gallery, SMAC, had failed to return her painting “Audible Doom” (2021) for four years after it did not sell at Miart in Milan in 2022. After nearly 13 years with the gallery, she left SMAC late last year and raised the question of where the work was less than eight months later, saying she did not expect to see it again.
In an email to Hyperallergic, Gottgens said SMAC also had a pattern of withholding payments that had already been agreed upon, and in one case paid for a sold artwork “years later.” “It would often take many months if not longer to get paid and then only after persistent badgering and reminders,” Gottgens wrote.
SMAC Exhibitions Coordinator and Operations Manager Jean Butler denied the artist’s allegations, including the claims surrounding “Audible Doom,” and said in a statement to Hyperallergic that Gottgens “was aware of the location of the work.” Butler said the delay stemmed from import and export problems outside the gallery’s control, and that the gallery kept the artist and her husband informed about the painting’s whereabouts throughout.
According to emails reviewed by Hyperallergic, a lawyer for the gallery accused Gottgens of posting “defamatory and false posts on social media, clearly insinuating that certain artworks have been misappropriated by SMAC, despite [her] having knowledge that this is not the case.” Gottgens also said she asked for the return of her unsold painting “Monster Love” (2010) in early 2025. After some back-and-forth, she said the gallery returned the work, which had been scheduled to appear in a motherhood-themed exhibition at the Iziko South African Museum.
In February 2025, however, a collector contacted Gottgens and said he owned the piece, which he appeared to have bought in 2024 without her knowledge. When she confronted the gallery, Gottgens said she was paid “instantly” and told the incident was an “administrative error.” At the time she left SMAC last November, Gottgens said the gallery still held more than 50 of her artworks. She added, “Since I left SMAC, I have been in a constant struggle to get the return of my work in their possession, in South Africa and around the world.”
By now, the artist said, the gallery has accounted for “most of the work” and “all of the money” it owed her, though she described the process as delayed despite repeated commitments to return the items. She also alleged that SMAC was unusually secretive about the collectors of her work. SMAC’s lawyer contacted Gottgens after she posted about “Audible Doom” on Instagram, and she agreed to remove the post “once [she] had information or resolution on the work.”
After the post drew comments from other artists describing similar experiences with SMAC, Gottgens said she received R297,500 (~$18,218) in payment for her three paintings shown at Miart in July. Hyperallergic has also reached out to another artist, Jody Paulsen, who reportedly had a similar experience, but has not yet received a response. In a statement to Hyperallergic, SMAC said that after the payment to Gottgens, the paintings are now the gallery’s property and it is “not obligated to return them to Gottgens when they arrive in South Africa on the 20th of August 2026.”
In one email reviewed by Hyperallergic, Gottgens told the gallery she would rather have her artworks returned than receive payment, but felt she had no choice but to accept the payouts. In other communications provided by SMAC, Gottgens warned that she would take the matter to social media if the gallery did not pay her invoice before June 30. The gallery also supplied shipping updates from Rotterdam, though it is unclear which paintings were included. SMAC separately rejected previous claims from two anonymous former employees, who told Artnews they had received emotional calls from artists and exhibition text writers seeking payment they said the gallery owed them. “I still do not know where ‘Audible Doom’ is, when or to whom it was sold or if it was indeed sold,” Gottgens told Hyperallergic. “Importantly, I would like to know what has happened to the work.”
