The curatorial premise of the exhibition is rooted in the concept of “letting the land lie fallow”, an agricultural term for farmland which has been ploughed and harrowed but left for a period without being sown in order to restore its fertility or to avoid surplus production. The exhibition invites 22 artists to contribute work that explore notions of resting. Applying this concept as a metaphor for studio practice, we are interested in the importance of times of rest as being conducive to the creative process. In more ways than one, the exhibition is sympathetic to time, making way for the productivity of waiting. Through this exhibition we consider the antithesis of rest as inaction, observing the word instead as activism. As a response to emerging global political narratives based on divide, opposition and fear, we look to rest as a space for healing, reflection, and growth. Through this exhibition we hope to explore how true sustainability (through contemporary notions of care) can foster longevity and legacy - especially in how it pertains to the role of the artist in leading thought on critical ethics. As a body of work brought upon as a result of post-colonial criticality, the concept of fallow land can be interpreted as a psychological landscape and be more literally tied to the complex history of land ownership in Southern Africa.
The collection of work comprises a multitude of contemporary expressions, including sculpture, textile and tapestry, drawing, painting, sound and more. Through the interaction between these works, and by means of its exposure to new audiences, we hope to add to the developing language and perception of contemporary art from the African continent.
Exhibiting artists:
Kamyar Bineshtarigh, Dale Lawrence, Alexandra Karakashian, Thami Kiti, Bella Knemeyer, Mongezi Ncaphayi, Michele Mathison, Maja Marx, Bulumko Mbete, Seretse Moletsane, Richard Mudariki, Gareth Nyandoro, Jody Paulsen, Mankebe Seakgoe, Brett Seiler, Guy Simpson, Inga Somdyala, Ben Stanwix & Xhanti Zwelendaba, Atang Tshikare, Anna van der Ploeg and Pierre Vermeulen.
Gareth Nyandoro | born 1982, Zimbabwe
Interested in the confluence of commerce and culture, Gareth Nyandoro transmutes elements of Zimbabwe’s informal trade sector into large-scale works on paper. Having trained as a printmaker, Nyandoro’s artworks are characterised by a technique he calls “kuchekacheka.” “To cut” in Shona and repeated for emphasis in the style of Zimbabwe’s street slang, “kuchekacheka” describes Nyandoro’s process of incising, inking, and peeling away the paper’s surface. At times, Nyandoro integrates three-dimensional forms into his print works, his collages transforming into backdrops for installations. Through the inclusion of props such as clothing, fresh produce, and found objects, Nyandoro evokes the atmosphere of Harare’s marketplace stalls. In Musika WaBaba VaMike (2019) (Mike’s Father’s Market), paper sheets have been affixed to canvas and imprinted with the figure of a street vendor. The vendor’s wares – potatoes, cabbages, coal – are positioned on the gallery floor. With the produce’s impending decay, and Nyandoro’s abstraction of the vendor, Musika WaBaba VaMike calls for reflection on the resilience of informal traders in Zimbabwe’s faltering economy.
Gareth Nyandoro was born in 1982 in Bikita, Zimbabwe and currently lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe. Nyandoro obtained a National Diploma in Fine Art from Harare Polytechnic in 2003, before furthering his studies in Creative Arts and Design at Chinhoyi University of Technology, Zimbabwe in 2008. In 2014 and 2015, Nyandoro was a resident artist at the Rijksakedemie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, Netherlands. In 2016 he was awarded the FT/OppenheimerFunds Emerging Voices Art Award.
Gareth Nyandoro is noted for his large works on paper, which often spill out of their two-dimensional format and into installations that include paper scraps and objects found in the markets of Harare, where he lives and works. The artist’s chief source of inspiration is the daily landscape of the city and its residents, both within the local milieu and the larger cultural panorama of Zimbabwe. Inspired by his training as a printmaker, and derived from etching, the artist’s distinctive technique, Kucheka cheka, is named after the infinitive and present tense declinations of the Shona verb cheka, which means ‘to cut’.
Selected solo exhibitions include Pfumvudza at Tiwani Contemporary in London, UK (2024); Suburban Bliss at Althuis Hofland Fine Arts in Amsterdam, Netherlands (2022); Maworks, at Van Doren Waxter in New York NY, USA (2021); Ruwa at Tiwani Contemporary in London (2020); ...READ ALL ABOUT at Van Doren Waxter Gallery in New York (2018); Stall(s) of Fame at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, France (2017); Mutariri at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (2012).
Selected group exhibitions include Yinka Shonibare: Free The Wind, The Spirit, and The Sun at Stephen Friedman Gallery in London, UK (2023); I See You at Tiwani Contemporary in Lagos, Nigeria (2022); Defying the Narrative: Contemporary Art from West and Southern Africa, Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco, USA (2018); Five Bhobh - Painting at the End of an Era, Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA), Cape Town, South Africa (2018) For the Love of the Game 1998-2018, Magasins Généraux, Paris, France (2018); Drawing Africa on the Map, Quetzal Art Centre, Vidigueira, Portugal (2018); All Things Being Equal at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA), in Cape Town (2017). In 2015, Nyandoro was one of three artists selected to represent the Zimbabwean Pavilion in a travelling exhibition titled Pixels of Ubuntu/ Unhu, curated by Raphael Chikukwa, for the 56th Venice Biennale in Italy, travelling further to the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe and the Association for Visual Arts (AVA) Gallery, in Cape Town, South Africa in 2016.
Notable collections include: The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City, USA; Fondation Sindika Dokolo, Luanda, Angola; Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA), Cape Town, South Africa; SAM Art Projects, Paris, France and The National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare,
Thami Kiti | born 1968, South Africa
Working predominantly as a carver, Thamsanqa (Thami) Eddie Kiti uses sculpted forms as modes for storytelling. Pursuing themes from Xhosa culture, Kiti’s works reference the phenomena of birth, initiation, marriage, and death – often in relation to the earth. On occasion, Kiti sculpts hybrid figures, combining features of people and goats to illustrate the affinity between human and animal beings. Untitled (Civet) (2024) and Untitled (Leopard) (2024), carved from mixed woods with elaborate inlays, are informed by Kiti’s childhood encounters with animals while herding in the Eastern Cape. Where traditional healers use civet skin to treat chest ailments, leopards feature prominently in Xhosa allegory.
Thamsanqa Eddie Kiti was born in 1968 in Machabini, a village near Queenstown in the Eastern Cape. He has lived in Khayelitsha since his early youth. In the late 1980s and 90s, Thamsanqa Kiti attended Community Arts Project (CAP) at St Philips in Woodstock, and took classes in carving, drawing, painting and print making under Mario Sickle, Lucy Alexander, Lionel Davis, Lovell Friedman and Sipho Hlati.
Working mainly as a carver, Thamsanqa Kiti has had his work included on various exhibitions including: Thami Kiti and Wanini Hill at the UCT Irma Stern Museum in 1995; Engaging the Shadows, Robben Island, 1997; Homecoming, Gug’Sthebe, Langa, 2001; Against the Grain, 2013, Iziko South African National Gallery curated by Mario Pissarra; my whole body changed into something else, Stevenson gallery, 2021 curated by Sisipho Ngodwana and Sinazo Chiya; Seeds of the Fig an exhibition curated by RESERVOIR in collaboration with Whatiftheworld for Krone in Tulbagh, 2023; and iSenzo Sak’dala, a group exhibition curated by Lebo Kekana at RESERVOIR Projects in Cape Town in 2024. He participated in the Thapong International Artists Workshop in Gaborone in 1996 as well as a number of workshops in Cape Town and Pretoria. Thamsanqa Kiti worked for the Handspring Puppet Company from 2008-2011, and has produced a number of his own unique articulated and puppet animals. In 2017, he was the winner of the Craft Award for his carved initiation staffs for the Innibos Laeveld Nasionale Kunstefees in Mbombela.
He was commissioned to create a large temporary public sculpture, a mosaic hybrid figure of a bride, Umakhoti, for an outdoor exhibition, Refections, in Stellenbosch in 2015; a staff with a leopard, Ingwe Izidla Ngamabala, for the UCT Vice-Chancellor’s annual Award for Transformation in 2019; and a carved broom with a bird as part of Jane Alexander’s installation Infirmary, 2014, 2019. He has artwork in the Robben Island Collection, the collection of William Humphreys Art Gallery in Kimberley, the Community Arts Project Collection at the University of the Western Cape, and numerous private collections.
Thamsanqa Kiti’s works make direct reference to Xhosa culture, particularly birth, initiation, marriage and death in relation to the earth. They sometimes combine hybrid forms, particularly human and goat features, and other animals that hold cultural significance such as Inqaqa (civet) and Inganda (serval). His most recent work includes carved and decorated staffs with mounted animal figures that often refer to initiation, and individual animals composed of multiple types of wood, some with elaborate inlay.
Thami Kiti | born 1968, South Africa
Working predominantly as a carver, Thamsanqa (Thami) Eddie Kiti uses sculpted forms as modes for storytelling. Pursuing themes from Xhosa culture, Kiti’s works reference the phenomena of birth, initiation, marriage, and death – often in relation to the earth. On occasion, Kiti sculpts hybrid figures, combining features of people and goats to illustrate the affinity between human and animal beings. Untitled (Civet) (2024) and Untitled (Leopard) (2024), carved from mixed woods with elaborate inlays, are informed by Kiti’s childhood encounters with animals while herding in the Eastern Cape. Where traditional healers use civet skin to treat chest ailments, leopards feature prominently in Xhosa allegory.
Thamsanqa Eddie Kiti was born in 1968 in Machabini, a village near Queenstown in the Eastern Cape. He has lived in Khayelitsha since his early youth. In the late 1980s and 90s, Thamsanqa Kiti attended Community Arts Project (CAP) at St Philips in Woodstock, and took classes in carving, drawing, painting and print making under Mario Sickle, Lucy Alexander, Lionel Davis, Lovell Friedman and Sipho Hlati.
Working mainly as a carver, Thamsanqa Kiti has had his work included on various exhibitions including: Thami Kiti and Wanini Hill at the UCT Irma Stern Museum in 1995; Engaging the Shadows, Robben Island, 1997; Homecoming, Gug’Sthebe, Langa, 2001; Against the Grain, 2013, Iziko South African National Gallery curated by Mario Pissarra; my whole body changed into something else, Stevenson gallery, 2021 curated by Sisipho Ngodwana and Sinazo Chiya; Seeds of the Fig an exhibition curated by RESERVOIR in collaboration with Whatiftheworld for Krone in Tulbagh, 2023; and iSenzo Sak’dala, a group exhibition curated by Lebo Kekana at RESERVOIR Projects in Cape Town in 2024. He participated in the Thapong International Artists Workshop in Gaborone in 1996 as well as a number of workshops in Cape Town and Pretoria. Thamsanqa Kiti worked for the Handspring Puppet Company from 2008-2011, and has produced a number of his own unique articulated and puppet animals. In 2017, he was the winner of the Craft Award for his carved initiation staffs for the Innibos Laeveld Nasionale Kunstefees in Mbombela.
He was commissioned to create a large temporary public sculpture, a mosaic hybrid figure of a bride, Umakhoti, for an outdoor exhibition, Refections, in Stellenbosch in 2015; a staff with a leopard, Ingwe Izidla Ngamabala, for the UCT Vice-Chancellor’s annual Award for Transformation in 2019; and a carved broom with a bird as part of Jane Alexander’s installation Infirmary, 2014, 2019. He has artwork in the Robben Island Collection, the collection of William Humphreys Art Gallery in Kimberley, the Community Arts Project Collection at the University of the Western Cape, and numerous private collections.
Thamsanqa Kiti’s works make direct reference to Xhosa culture, particularly birth, initiation, marriage and death in relation to the earth. They sometimes combine hybrid forms, particularly human and goat features, and other animals that hold cultural significance such as Inqaqa (civet) and Inganda (serval). His most recent work includes carved and decorated staffs with mounted animal figures that often refer to initiation, and individual animals composed of multiple types of wood, some with elaborate inlay.
Inga Somdyala | b.1994, South Africa
Approaching his practice with a sensitivity towards various mediums, Inga Somdyala defies the conventional categorisations of painter or sculptor. Applying soil and earth pigments to textiles, Somdyala extends reflections on colonial and apartheid legacies and the negotiation thereof by South Africa’s youth. His canvases, stained, smeared, and often buried, oscillate between body and landscape, and garment and flag. In POMPA FUNEBRIS II (2024), the title derived from a Roman funeral procession, Somdyala portrays the colours of the South African flag in pigments extracted from the earth. The sixth colour, blue, is rendered in shweshwe fabric – introduced to the Xhosa by German settlers in the Eastern Cape, it constitutes a reminder of German colonialism. Incwadi Enomlomo Obomvu (studies for Blood of The Lamb) (2024) recalls the biblical motif of the sacrificial lamb. To imitate the texture of sheep hide, Somdyala distressed the canvas and combined such earth pigments as ochre, iron oxide, chalk, and ash. While the first and second panels appear the inner and outer skins of a lamb, the third – slimmer and monochrome red – suggests the book block of a bible.
Inga Somdyala was born in Komani, Eastern Cape, South Africa, and is currently living and working in Cape Town. He recently completed an MFA (2019) at the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Art. Somdyala is the 2022 recipient of the MTN New Contemporaries Award. Artist residencies include a three month residency at the Cité International des Arts in Paris, France (2023) and the Tankwa Artscape Residency in the Tankwa Karoo, South Africa (2023), as well as the Nirox artist residency at the Cradle of Humankind, South Africa. Somdyala’s solo exhibitions include As Far As The Sea at RESERVOIR in Cape Town (2023) and Adamah, curated by RESERVOIR at Whatiftheworld gallery, Cape Town (2022). Group exhibitions include: Layers: Rock Art Across Space and Time at Nirox Sculpture Park and the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) Origins Centre in Johannesburg (2023); The weight of a stone at Blank Projects in Cape Town (2023); Home Strange Home, curated by RESERVOIR at the Krone x WITW Gallery in Tulbagh, South Africa (2022) and Verse at the Association for the Visual Arts (AVA) Gallery (2022); and Matereality at the Iziko South African National Gallery (2020). Somdyala’s work is included in the IZIKO South African National Gallery’s collection as well as the Investec Collection in Cape Town.
Bulumko Mbete | b. 1995, South Africa
Bulumko Mbete was born 1995 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Currently Mbete is an MFA candidate at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, where she currently lives and works. Mbete completed her BFA, majoring in sculpture, at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Through her research and practice Mbete explores different forms of craft and design methodologies which are predominantly performed by women in Southern Africa. Her most recent works have focused on craft and design as indigenous knowledge systems, -archives, and modes of storytelling.
In 2023, Mbete was awarded the Absa L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto Award, as well as the Cassirer Welz Award. In the same year Mbete presented a solo exhibition at the Bag Factory in Johannesburg, titled I’ve known rivers. Further solo exhibitions include Does a kite leave a trace? curated by Lemeeze Davids at Under Projects in Cape Town in 2022, and A Thousand Things, curated by Amogelang Maledu at 99 Loop in Cape Town in 2021.
Mbete recently formed part of RESERVOIR’s presentation at RMB Latitudes Art Fair in Johannesburg which won the Lexus Best Stand award. Further group exhibitions include: iSenzo Sak’dala, curated by Lebo Kekana at RESERVOIR in Cape Town (2024); This is not a Map, Space Gallery in Pittsburgh, USA (2024); Ratlet’s Tomorrow Today Show Collection, How to Get to Make Believe, Mattress Factory Museum, Pittsburgh (2024); Senses, curated by Kamogelo Walaza at the Goethe Institute, Johannesburg (2023); Index, curated by Nkhensani Mkhari at RMB Latitudes Art Fair, Johannesburg (2023); Afropolis, curated by Kim Kandan and Lesole Tauatswala, Johannesburg (2022); Location Studio Practice, curated by Lesole Tauatswala and Shakes Mbolekwana, AVA Gallery, Cape Town (2022); Indlovukazi, curated by Ashley Walters for Woordfees, Stellenbosch, South Africa (2020); and Materiality, curated by Andrea Lewis, IZIKO South African National Gallery, Cape Town (2020).
Bulumko Mbete | b. 1995, South Africa
Bulumko Mbete was born 1995 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Currently Mbete is an MFA candidate at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, where she currently lives and works. Mbete completed her BFA, majoring in sculpture, at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Through her research and practice Mbete explores different forms of craft and design methodologies which are predominantly performed by women in Southern Africa. Her most recent works have focused on craft and design as indigenous knowledge systems, -archives, and modes of storytelling.
In 2023, Mbete was awarded the Absa L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto Award, as well as the Cassirer Welz Award. In the same year Mbete presented a solo exhibition at the Bag Factory in Johannesburg, titled I’ve known rivers. Further solo exhibitions include Does a kite leave a trace? curated by Lemeeze Davids at Under Projects in Cape Town in 2022, and A Thousand Things, curated by Amogelang Maledu at 99 Loop in Cape Town in 2021.
Mbete recently formed part of RESERVOIR’s presentation at RMB Latitudes Art Fair in Johannesburg which won the Lexus Best Stand award. Further group exhibitions include: iSenzo Sak’dala, curated by Lebo Kekana at RESERVOIR in Cape Town (2024); This is not a Map, Space Gallery in Pittsburgh, USA (2024); Ratlet’s Tomorrow Today Show Collection, How to Get to Make Believe, Mattress Factory Museum, Pittsburgh (2024); Senses, curated by Kamogelo Walaza at the Goethe Institute, Johannesburg (2023); Index, curated by Nkhensani Mkhari at RMB Latitudes Art Fair, Johannesburg (2023); Afropolis, curated by Kim Kandan and Lesole Tauatswala, Johannesburg (2022); Location Studio Practice, curated by Lesole Tauatswala and Shakes Mbolekwana, AVA Gallery, Cape Town (2022); Indlovukazi, curated by Ashley Walters for Woordfees, Stellenbosch, South Africa (2020); and Materiality, curated by Andrea Lewis, IZIKO South African National Gallery, Cape Town (2020).
Kamyar Bineshtarigh | born 1996, South Africa
Kamyar Bineshtarigh employs mark-making as an act of translation through which to explore the complexities arising from the movement, migration, and displacement of people. Comprising layers of canvas, ink, paint, and glue, amongst other mediums, Bineshtarigh’s artworks serve as immersive archives of personal and public histories. Where his earlier work was concerned with Arabic-Afrikaans, the early Cape tradition of notating phonetic Afrikaans in Arabic script, Bineshtarigh’s first solo exhibition at Southern Guild in 2023 marked a departure from this thematic preoccupation. Titled after the address of his former studio, located alongside a panel beating shop in a defunct garment factory in Cape Town’s semi-industrial suburb of Salt River, 9 Hopkins extended reflections on the condemned workshop. For Panel Beaters Wall VI (2023), Bineshtarigh applied cold glue to the surface of a wall, which, when peeled away, lifted the original wall paint, his own impressions, and the motor oil, spray paint, and sweat of the panel beaters. The structure now demolished to make way for a housing development, Panel Beaters Wall VI is a testament to the ongoing gentrification of the city, the history of the building, and the lives of those who laboured within it.
Kamyar Bineshtarigh was born in the small town of Semnan, about 200 km east of Tehran in Iran, in 1996, and moved to South Africa with his family when he was 15. Based in Cape Town, he works in a variety of media. His conceptual concerns range from language and communication in all its forms, to the movement, migration, and displacement of humankind.
In 2019, Bineshtarigh graduated with a Diploma in Fine Art from Ruth Prowse School of Art in Cape Town, where he received the Ruth Prowse Award for his series An Exhaustive Catalogue of Texts Dealing with the Orient. In 2021, he was awarded the Simon Gerson Prize for his graduate exhibition at the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Art, as well as a Creative Knowledge Resources Fellowship from the National Research Foundation and UCT. He was awarded the VAA award by ARP Residency in 2018, which led to his video work Shelter being screened at the Corto Lovere Film Festival in Lovere, Italy.
The artist’s interest in text, particularly Arabic script and calligraphy, has become an explorative means to study the nature of mark-making and the cultural complexities that often arise through translation. Script carries our collectively imposed meaning but also a multitude of intuitive translations, as well as an innate aesthetic of form and shape. This is embodied through the additive act of layering in Bineshtarigh’s works, with the artist utilising canvas, ink, pencil, shards of glass, glue, or layers of paint extracted from the very walls of his studio. Bineshtarigh frequently works on an immersive scale, creating site-specific installations that are arresting in their capacity to envelope the viewer.
Bineshtarigh’s most recent solo exhibition, 9 Hopkins, opened at Southern Guild in August 2023. Other solo exhibitions include koples boek(e) at the Goethe-Institut in Johannesburg (2021), Pilgrim as part of Everard Read’s Cubicle Series (2019), and Uncover at Norval Foundation (2022), which named him the inaugural winner of the Bowmans Young Artists Award. In 2024, koples boek(e) won the Humanities and Social Sciences Award for Best Emerging Artist/Curator from South Africa’s National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Southern Guild has presented his work at Expo Chicago (2024, 2023), The Armory Show (2023) and the Investec Cape Town Art Fair (ICTAF) in 2024 and 2023. For the 2024 iteration of ICTAF, Bineshtarigh was selected by critic/curator Sean O’Toole to participate in the SOLO Section. He has participated in group exhibitions at galleries including Stevenson, SMAC, Everard Read, Association of Visual Arts, and the NIROX Foundation. His work formed part of Mother Tongues (2024), the inaugural group exhibition at Southern Guild Los Angeles.
Alexandra Karakashian | born 1988, South Africa
Alexandra Karakashian works across mediums to extend reflections on displacement, migration, and exile. Roused by family history, her great-grandparents having settled in Johannesburg after fleeing the 1915 Armenian Genocide, Karakashian translates the laments of the unhomed into monochromatic paintings. While her use of abstraction and restrained palettes give rise to quiet pauses located in fragments of raw canvas, Karakashian’s return to texture and the colour black suggests an inner turmoil residing beneath the artwork’s surface. In here they passed II (2018), a solitary beam of light escapes a black canvas to allude to the stifling force of generational trauma. In contrast, Beneath III and IV (2017) offer muddied abstractions that, much like grief’s fugitive nature, resist easy comprehension.
Born in 1988, Johannesburg, South Africa, Alexandra Karakashian currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. The artist obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town in 2011, where she was awarded both the Judy Steinberg Painting Prize and the Simon Gerson Distinction Award. She went on to graduate with a Masters degree in Fine Art from the same institution in 2015.
Most recently, Karakashian presented After the Wake, a solo exhibition with Sabrina Amrani in Madrid, Spain. Other solo exhibitions include: Consolations at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town (2021); A rhythm for falling, at Sabrina Amrani Gallery in Madrid (2019); here they passed at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town and In on itself, at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery in Seattle, USA, both in 2018; unbecoming, at SMAC Gallery in Johannesburg (2017); Passage, a special project at 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London, UK, and GROUND at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town, both in 2016. That same year, Karakashian was an artist in residence at Capo d’Arte in Gagliano del Capo, Italy, which culminated in a solo presentation, self-titled Alexandra Karakashian, at the Villa Medici in Gagliano del Capo.
Notable group exhibitions include: Matereality, a group exhibition at Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town, as well as A Show of Solidarity at SMAC in Cape Town, both in 2020; Inner Landscapes at Galleria Anna Marra in Rome, Italy; Material Insanity, at MACAAL in Marrakech, Morocco; and Filling in the Gaps, at Iziko South African National Museum in Cape Town, South Africa, all in 2019; Ravelled Threads, at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York City, USA; and A Letter to My 22-year-old Self at BKhz Studio & Gallery in Johannesburg, both in 2018.
Karakashian’s works have been included in various group presentations at, among others: Art Basel Hong Kong and the Tapei Dangdai in Taiwan, both in 2020; as well as ACROlisboa in Portugal; ACROmadrid in Spain, Artissima in Turin, Italy, and Art Dubai, UAE, all in 2019.
Alexandra Karakashian | born 1988, South Africa
Alexandra Karakashian works across mediums to extend reflections on displacement, migration, and exile. Roused by family history, her great-grandparents having settled in Johannesburg after fleeing the 1915 Armenian Genocide, Karakashian translates the laments of the unhomed into monochromatic paintings. While her use of abstraction and restrained palettes give rise to quiet pauses located in fragments of raw canvas, Karakashian’s return to texture and the colour black suggests an inner turmoil residing beneath the artwork’s surface. In here they passed II (2018), a solitary beam of light escapes a black canvas to allude to the stifling force of generational trauma. In contrast, Beneath III and IV (2017) offer muddied abstractions that, much like grief’s fugitive nature, resist easy comprehension.
Born in 1988, Johannesburg, South Africa, Alexandra Karakashian currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. The artist obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town in 2011, where she was awarded both the Judy Steinberg Painting Prize and the Simon Gerson Distinction Award. She went on to graduate with a Masters degree in Fine Art from the same institution in 2015.
Most recently, Karakashian presented After the Wake, a solo exhibition with Sabrina Amrani in Madrid, Spain. Other solo exhibitions include: Consolations at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town (2021); A rhythm for falling, at Sabrina Amrani Gallery in Madrid (2019); here they passed at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town and In on itself, at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery in Seattle, USA, both in 2018; unbecoming, at SMAC Gallery in Johannesburg (2017); Passage, a special project at 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London, UK, and GROUND at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town, both in 2016. That same year, Karakashian was an artist in residence at Capo d’Arte in Gagliano del Capo, Italy, which culminated in a solo presentation, self-titled Alexandra Karakashian, at the Villa Medici in Gagliano del Capo.
Notable group exhibitions include: Matereality, a group exhibition at Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town, as well as A Show of Solidarity at SMAC in Cape Town, both in 2020; Inner Landscapes at Galleria Anna Marra in Rome, Italy; Material Insanity, at MACAAL in Marrakech, Morocco; and Filling in the Gaps, at Iziko South African National Museum in Cape Town, South Africa, all in 2019; Ravelled Threads, at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York City, USA; and A Letter to My 22-year-old Self at BKhz Studio & Gallery in Johannesburg, both in 2018.
Karakashian’s works have been included in various group presentations at, among others: Art Basel Hong Kong and the Tapei Dangdai in Taiwan, both in 2020; as well as ACROlisboa in Portugal; ACROmadrid in Spain, Artissima in Turin, Italy, and Art Dubai, UAE, all in 2019.
Alexandra Karakashian | born 1988, South Africa
Alexandra Karakashian works across mediums to extend reflections on displacement, migration, and exile. Roused by family history, her great-grandparents having settled in Johannesburg after fleeing the 1915 Armenian Genocide, Karakashian translates the laments of the unhomed into monochromatic paintings. While her use of abstraction and restrained palettes give rise to quiet pauses located in fragments of raw canvas, Karakashian’s return to texture and the colour black suggests an inner turmoil residing beneath the artwork’s surface. In here they passed II (2018), a solitary beam of light escapes a black canvas to allude to the stifling force of generational trauma. In contrast, Beneath III and IV (2017) offer muddied abstractions that, much like grief’s fugitive nature, resist easy comprehension.
Born in 1988, Johannesburg, South Africa, Alexandra Karakashian currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. The artist obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town in 2011, where she was awarded both the Judy Steinberg Painting Prize and the Simon Gerson Distinction Award. She went on to graduate with a Masters degree in Fine Art from the same institution in 2015.
Most recently, Karakashian presented After the Wake, a solo exhibition with Sabrina Amrani in Madrid, Spain. Other solo exhibitions include: Consolations at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town (2021); A rhythm for falling, at Sabrina Amrani Gallery in Madrid (2019); here they passed at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town and In on itself, at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery in Seattle, USA, both in 2018; unbecoming, at SMAC Gallery in Johannesburg (2017); Passage, a special project at 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London, UK, and GROUND at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town, both in 2016. That same year, Karakashian was an artist in residence at Capo d’Arte in Gagliano del Capo, Italy, which culminated in a solo presentation, self-titled Alexandra Karakashian, at the Villa Medici in Gagliano del Capo.
Notable group exhibitions include: Matereality, a group exhibition at Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town, as well as A Show of Solidarity at SMAC in Cape Town, both in 2020; Inner Landscapes at Galleria Anna Marra in Rome, Italy; Material Insanity, at MACAAL in Marrakech, Morocco; and Filling in the Gaps, at Iziko South African National Museum in Cape Town, South Africa, all in 2019; Ravelled Threads, at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York City, USA; and A Letter to My 22-year-old Self at BKhz Studio & Gallery in Johannesburg, both in 2018.
Karakashian’s works have been included in various group presentations at, among others: Art Basel Hong Kong and the Tapei Dangdai in Taiwan, both in 2020; as well as ACROlisboa in Portugal; ACROmadrid in Spain, Artissima in Turin, Italy, and Art Dubai, UAE, all in 2019.
Mongezi Ncaphayi | born 1983, South Africa
At once a painter, printmaker, and jazz musician, Mongezi Ncaphayi uses abstraction to communicate the complexity of the human experience. While some artworks respond to the socio-political landscape of South Africa, addressing such themes as rampant inequality, the collapse of urban infrastructure, and dominant power structures, others are rooted in individual experience. For Bo-Kaap’s Nocturne (2024), Ncaphayi has applied wet paint to wet canvas, the resultant pattern mimicking the contours of a topographic map. Layered upon the surface, bold colour and geometric form bestow the artwork with the cadence of a choral composition – that, as the title suggests, Bo-Kaap’s Nocturne might be listened to rather than looked at.
Mongezi Ncaphayi was born in 1983 in Benoni in Eastern Gauteng, South Africa. He currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. Following his graduation with a Diploma in Art and Design from the Ekurhuleni East College-Benoni in 2005, Ncaphayi completed a Professional Printmaking Course at Artist Proof Studio in 2008. In 2012, Ncaphayi obtained a Certificate in Advanced Studies from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, USA.
In 2011, Ncaphayi received the Ampersand Foundation Fellowship in New York City, USA, while in 2013 he was the recipient of the prestigious Absa L’atelier Gerard Sekoto Award, earning him a three-month residency at the Cite Des Arts in Paris, France. In 2016, the artist was awarded a grant from the Prince Claus Fund Grant in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Selected artist-in-residency programmes include: The Atelier le Grand Village Residency in Angouleme, France, in 2014 and the Thami Mnyele Foundation Residency in Amsterdam, Netherlands, in 2016. In 2019, Ncaphayi was the recipient of the Africa First Art Prize, culminating in a solo presentation of new works at the 2020 Investec Cape Town Art Fair in Cape Town. In 2023, Ncaphayi was selected as a finalist for the Sovereign African Art Prize at the Norval Foundation, South Africa.
In 2016, Ncaphayi presented his inaugural solo exhibition, Spirit’s Response, as the 2013 Absa L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto Award-winner, which debuted at the ABSA Art Gallery in Johannesburg, South Africa. The exhibition travelled to Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU), Port Elizabeth, South Africa; Spin Street Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa; Alliance Française, Pretoria, South Africa; and the KwaZulu Natal Society of the Arts (KZNSA), Durban, South Africa. Further selected solo exhibitions include Which Way is East? at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town (2017); and Liminality in Space, at Enari Gallery in Amsterdam, Netherlands (2023).
Selected group exhibitions include A tapestry of contemporary African art, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Long Island, USA (2024); African Abstraction, at Montague Contemporary in New York, USA (2023); Tomorrow there will be more of us curated by Khanyisile Mbongwa for the inaugural Stellenbosch Triennale in Stellenbosch, South Africa (2020); Filling in the Gaps, at the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town (2019); Print Promises, at Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town (2018). Ncaphayi’s work is included in a number of important collections, including: the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, USA; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA; Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), Manchester, USA; School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA), Boston, USA; Thami Mnyele Foundation, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris, France; The Ampersand Foundation (TAF), London, UK; ABSA Art Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa; the Luciano Benetton Foundation, Treviso, Italy among others.
Bella Knemeyer | born 1991, South Africa
At once an artist and landscape architect, Bella Knemeyer is concerned with the complexity of city-making and its confluence with culture and the natural environment. As part of her interdisciplinary approach to urbanism, Knemeyer mulches, plasters, and rakes various substrates into paper landscapes. Where Up and away and over and again (2024) recalls an open sky, a plume of smoke discernible in its expanse, Double toil and trouble (2024) portrays the aftermath of a human-made disaster. Tracing the silhouette of an unturned paving stone in Buried between a lagoon and a golf course (2024), Knemeyer alludes to the dumping of rubble in a wetland to shroud the violent demolition of a nearby neighbourhood. The unfolding of each artwork prompts reflection on the metabolisation of space – its erasure, dormancy, and eventual reincarnation.
Bella Knemeyer was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1991, where she currently lives and works. In 2017 she coupled a BAFA, majoring in sculpture from the University of Cape Town, with a Masters in Landscape Architecture from the University of Edinburgh.
In 2023, RESERVOIR presented Knemeyer’s first solo exhibition, titled Something about this place, at their gallery in Cape Town. Recent group exhibitions include: Approximations to a voice: Ellipsis, curated by Jean Dreyer at the Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery for the 2024 Free State Arts Festival in Bloemfontein, South Africa; Oh So Quiet at Whatiftheworld Gallery, Full House by FEDE and Under Projects at Blank Projects and Winter 2023 at Everard Read Gallery, all in Cape Town in 2023; Open Plot, a group exhibition curated by RESERVOIR at THK Gallery in Cape Town; Ex Libris, a group exhibition curated by Barbara Wildenboer at Everard Read in Franschhoek; and A pebble in the mouth, a group presentation curated by Maja Marx for the Turbine Art Fair, all in 2022; Vessel at Boschendal Manor House Gallery with Norval Foundation in Franschhoek; Up Close at a Distance, a duo-exhibition at OPEN24HRS in Cape Town all in 2022; and Bad Paper Kiosk, at Whatiftheworld Gallery in Cape Town in 2020.
RESERVOIR has presented Knemeyer’s work at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, the inaugural RMB Latitudes Fair in Johannesburg, and FNB Art Joburg in Johannesburg, South Africa, all in 2023. In 2024, Knemeyer showcased at Zona Maco in Mexico, with Nuweland Gallery. Her work is included in the IZIKO National Gallery permanent collection (Cape Town) as well as the Investec Collection (Cape Town).
Dale Lawrence | born 1988, South Africa
Dale Lawrence, concerned with the interrelation of language, time, and materiality, transforms degradable data into enduring artworks. Disrupting repetitive processes such as his own artistic practice, a familiar language, or habitual behaviours, Lawrence is at once an observer of the familiar and bearer of the unknown. For his works involving script, Lawrence extracts phrases from transient texts – clickbait headlines, television periodicals, product labels, and song lyrics – reordering them into poetic logs and printing them in programming type. Lawrence compiled the text of This is a Beautiful Picture of a Japanese Tree pt. I (2024) by entering Thai script taken from product labels into translation software. Where This is a Beautiful Picture of a Japanese Tree pt. I comprises stacks of improbable logs laminated in epoxy, in This is a Beautiful Picture of a Japanese Tree pt. II (2024), kilometres of packaging tape are layered and cut to resemble an ancient manuscript or early computing device.
Dale Lawrence was born in 1988, South Africa, and currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. Lawrence holds a postgraduate diploma in print from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, at the University of Cape Town, where he was also the recipient of the Harries Award in 2010. Lawrence recently participated in RAW Academie Session 9, a residency directed by Linda Goode Bryant, at the ICA Philadelphia, USA.
In 2023 Dale Lawrence presented a solo exhibition, titled Midden, at Whatiftheworld Gallery, Cape Town. Other solo exhibitions include Broken Tools in 2021 at Nuweland, the Netherlands; Further Prototypes in 2019, Another Helping in 2018 and Look Busy in 2016, all at SMITH Gallery in Cape Town. Selected group exhibitions include Infrastructure at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, USA, and The Phoenix Runway, curated by RESERVOIR at Whatiftheworld Gallery in Cape Town, both in 2022; 40 under 40 at WITW x Krone in Tulbagh, South Africa, and Between Strangers at Nuweland in the Netherlands, both in 2021; Peep Show, an independent group exhibition organised by Dale Lawrence in 2020.
In 2023 RESERVOIR presented Lawrence’s work as part of a dual booth at Artissima in the New Entries section. His work was also included in RESERVOIR’s presentations at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair in Cape Town in 2023 and 2024. Also in 2024, Lawrence showed work at Zona Maco with Nuweland gallery and Miart with Whatiftheworld Gallery. He has participated in various editions of FNB Art Joburg, including a solo presentation in 2017 through his creative studio, Hoick.
Lawrence’s work is included in the University of Cape Town Collection, South Africa, the National Art Bank Collection, South Africa, and the MAPSA collection in Richmond, South Africa.
Dale Lawrence | born 1988, South Africa
Dale Lawrence, concerned with the interrelation of language, time, and materiality, transforms degradable data into enduring artworks. Disrupting repetitive processes such as his own artistic practice, a familiar language, or habitual behaviours, Lawrence is at once an observer of the familiar and bearer of the unknown. For his works involving script, Lawrence extracts phrases from transient texts – clickbait headlines, television periodicals, product labels, and song lyrics – reordering them into poetic logs and printing them in programming type. Lawrence compiled the text of This is a Beautiful Picture of a Japanese Tree pt. I (2024) by entering Thai script taken from product labels into translation software. Where This is a Beautiful Picture of a Japanese Tree pt. I comprises stacks of improbable logs laminated in epoxy, in This is a Beautiful Picture of a Japanese Tree pt. II (2024), kilometres of packaging tape are layered and cut to resemble an ancient manuscript or early computing device.
Dale Lawrence was born in 1988, South Africa, and currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. Lawrence holds a postgraduate diploma in print from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, at the University of Cape Town, where he was also the recipient of the Harries Award in 2010. Lawrence recently participated in RAW Academie Session 9, a residency directed by Linda Goode Bryant, at the ICA Philadelphia, USA.
In 2023 Dale Lawrence presented a solo exhibition, titled Midden, at Whatiftheworld Gallery, Cape Town. Other solo exhibitions include Broken Tools in 2021 at Nuweland, the Netherlands; Further Prototypes in 2019, Another Helping in 2018 and Look Busy in 2016, all at SMITH Gallery in Cape Town. Selected group exhibitions include Infrastructure at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, USA, and The Phoenix Runway, curated by RESERVOIR at Whatiftheworld Gallery in Cape Town, both in 2022; 40 under 40 at WITW x Krone in Tulbagh, South Africa, and Between Strangers at Nuweland in the Netherlands, both in 2021; Peep Show, an independent group exhibition organised by Dale Lawrence in 2020.
In 2023 RESERVOIR presented Lawrence’s work as part of a dual booth at Artissima in the New Entries section. His work was also included in RESERVOIR’s presentations at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair in Cape Town in 2023 and 2024. Also in 2024, Lawrence showed work at Zona Maco with Nuweland gallery and Miart with Whatiftheworld Gallery. He has participated in various editions of FNB Art Joburg, including a solo presentation in 2017 through his creative studio, Hoick.
Lawrence’s work is included in the University of Cape Town Collection, South Africa, the National Art Bank Collection, South Africa, and the MAPSA collection in Richmond, South Africa.
Dale Lawrence | born 1988, South Africa
Dale Lawrence, concerned with the interrelation of language, time, and materiality, transforms degradable data into enduring artworks. Disrupting repetitive processes such as his own artistic practice, a familiar language, or habitual behaviours, Lawrence is at once an observer of the familiar and bearer of the unknown. For his works involving script, Lawrence extracts phrases from transient texts – clickbait headlines, television periodicals, product labels, and song lyrics – reordering them into poetic logs and printing them in programming type. Lawrence compiled the text of This is a Beautiful Picture of a Japanese Tree pt. I (2024) by entering Thai script taken from product labels into translation software. Where This is a Beautiful Picture of a Japanese Tree pt. I comprises stacks of improbable logs laminated in epoxy, in This is a Beautiful Picture of a Japanese Tree pt. II (2024), kilometres of packaging tape are layered and cut to resemble an ancient manuscript or early computing device.
Dale Lawrence was born in 1988, South Africa, and currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. Lawrence holds a postgraduate diploma in print from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, at the University of Cape Town, where he was also the recipient of the Harries Award in 2010. Lawrence recently participated in RAW Academie Session 9, a residency directed by Linda Goode Bryant, at the ICA Philadelphia, USA.
In 2023 Dale Lawrence presented a solo exhibition, titled Midden, at Whatiftheworld Gallery, Cape Town. Other solo exhibitions include Broken Tools in 2021 at Nuweland, the Netherlands; Further Prototypes in 2019, Another Helping in 2018 and Look Busy in 2016, all at SMITH Gallery in Cape Town. Selected group exhibitions include Infrastructure at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, USA, and The Phoenix Runway, curated by RESERVOIR at Whatiftheworld Gallery in Cape Town, both in 2022; 40 under 40 at WITW x Krone in Tulbagh, South Africa, and Between Strangers at Nuweland in the Netherlands, both in 2021; Peep Show, an independent group exhibition organised by Dale Lawrence in 2020.
In 2023 RESERVOIR presented Lawrence’s work as part of a dual booth at Artissima in the New Entries section. His work was also included in RESERVOIR’s presentations at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair in Cape Town in 2023 and 2024. Also in 2024, Lawrence showed work at Zona Maco with Nuweland gallery and Miart with Whatiftheworld Gallery. He has participated in various editions of FNB Art Joburg, including a solo presentation in 2017 through his creative studio, Hoick.
Lawrence’s work is included in the University of Cape Town Collection, South Africa, the National Art Bank Collection, South Africa, and the MAPSA collection in Richmond, South Africa.
Dale Lawrence | born 1988, South Africa
Dale Lawrence, concerned with the interrelation of language, time, and materiality, transforms degradable data into enduring artworks. Disrupting repetitive processes such as his own artistic practice, a familiar language, or habitual behaviours, Lawrence is at once an observer of the familiar and bearer of the unknown. For his works involving script, Lawrence extracts phrases from transient texts – clickbait headlines, television periodicals, product labels, and song lyrics – reordering them into poetic logs and printing them in programming type. Lawrence compiled the text of This is a Beautiful Picture of a Japanese Tree pt. I (2024) by entering Thai script taken from product labels into translation software. Where This is a Beautiful Picture of a Japanese Tree pt. I comprises stacks of improbable logs laminated in epoxy, in This is a Beautiful Picture of a Japanese Tree pt. II (2024), kilometres of packaging tape are layered and cut to resemble an ancient manuscript or early computing device.
Dale Lawrence was born in 1988, South Africa, and currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. Lawrence holds a postgraduate diploma in print from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, at the University of Cape Town, where he was also the recipient of the Harries Award in 2010. Lawrence recently participated in RAW Academie Session 9, a residency directed by Linda Goode Bryant, at the ICA Philadelphia, USA.
In 2023 Dale Lawrence presented a solo exhibition, titled Midden, at Whatiftheworld Gallery, Cape Town. Other solo exhibitions include Broken Tools in 2021 at Nuweland, the Netherlands; Further Prototypes in 2019, Another Helping in 2018 and Look Busy in 2016, all at SMITH Gallery in Cape Town. Selected group exhibitions include Infrastructure at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, USA, and The Phoenix Runway, curated by RESERVOIR at Whatiftheworld Gallery in Cape Town, both in 2022; 40 under 40 at WITW x Krone in Tulbagh, South Africa, and Between Strangers at Nuweland in the Netherlands, both in 2021; Peep Show, an independent group exhibition organised by Dale Lawrence in 2020.
In 2023 RESERVOIR presented Lawrence’s work as part of a dual booth at Artissima in the New Entries section. His work was also included in RESERVOIR’s presentations at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair in Cape Town in 2023 and 2024. Also in 2024, Lawrence showed work at Zona Maco with Nuweland gallery and Miart with Whatiftheworld Gallery. He has participated in various editions of FNB Art Joburg, including a solo presentation in 2017 through his creative studio, Hoick.
Lawrence’s work is included in the University of Cape Town Collection, South Africa, the National Art Bank Collection, South Africa, and the MAPSA collection in Richmond, South Africa.
Dale Lawrence | born 1988, South Africa
Dale Lawrence, concerned with the interrelation of language, time, and materiality, transforms degradable data into enduring artworks. Disrupting repetitive processes such as his own artistic practice, a familiar language, or habitual behaviours, Lawrence is at once an observer of the familiar and bearer of the unknown. For his works involving script, Lawrence extracts phrases from transient texts – clickbait headlines, television periodicals, product labels, and song lyrics – reordering them into poetic logs and printing them in programming type. Lawrence compiled the text of This is a Beautiful Picture of a Japanese Tree pt. I (2024) by entering Thai script taken from product labels into translation software. Where This is a Beautiful Picture of a Japanese Tree pt. I comprises stacks of improbable logs laminated in epoxy, in This is a Beautiful Picture of a Japanese Tree pt. II (2024), kilometres of packaging tape are layered and cut to resemble an ancient manuscript or early computing device.
Dale Lawrence was born in 1988, South Africa, and currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. Lawrence holds a postgraduate diploma in print from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, at the University of Cape Town, where he was also the recipient of the Harries Award in 2010. Lawrence recently participated in RAW Academie Session 9, a residency directed by Linda Goode Bryant, at the ICA Philadelphia, USA.
In 2023 Dale Lawrence presented a solo exhibition, titled Midden, at Whatiftheworld Gallery, Cape Town. Other solo exhibitions include Broken Tools in 2021 at Nuweland, the Netherlands; Further Prototypes in 2019, Another Helping in 2018 and Look Busy in 2016, all at SMITH Gallery in Cape Town. Selected group exhibitions include Infrastructure at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, USA, and The Phoenix Runway, curated by RESERVOIR at Whatiftheworld Gallery in Cape Town, both in 2022; 40 under 40 at WITW x Krone in Tulbagh, South Africa, and Between Strangers at Nuweland in the Netherlands, both in 2021; Peep Show, an independent group exhibition organised by Dale Lawrence in 2020.
In 2023 RESERVOIR presented Lawrence’s work as part of a dual booth at Artissima in the New Entries section. His work was also included in RESERVOIR’s presentations at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair in Cape Town in 2023 and 2024. Also in 2024, Lawrence showed work at Zona Maco with Nuweland gallery and Miart with Whatiftheworld Gallery. He has participated in various editions of FNB Art Joburg, including a solo presentation in 2017 through his creative studio, Hoick.
Lawrence’s work is included in the University of Cape Town Collection, South Africa, the National Art Bank Collection, South Africa, and the MAPSA collection in Richmond, South Africa.
Maja Marx | born 1977, South Africa
Maja Marx approaches painting as an activation of surface, mapping found compositions onto canvas and allowing the process to proliferate. With each layer responding to the one beneath it, her paintings are equal parts rhythmic and ruminatory. The proximity to the canvas from which Marx paints imbues each artwork with a vivid legibility, that it might read as a stratified rockface, textured cardboard, or the shorthand notations of an engineer. Both Longhand (2024) and Farsight (2024) extend meditations on the thought processes that occur when painting in a dedicated studio environment. Longhand, a large-scale painting that stretches 23 meters to measure the southern corner and walls of a building, evokes the colour and growth of nearby lichens. While Longhand ought to be viewed from afar, Farsight demands closer observation – the eye’s mechanics obscuring reality to suggest a plane that extends beyond the painting’s surface.
Maja Marx was born in 1977 in South Africa, and is currently living and working in Cape Town, South Africa. Marx received an MFA in Fine Art from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2008. She is a fellow of the Ampersand Foundation (New York/ Johannesburg) and a participant of MAPS (Master of Arts in Public Spheres), an exchange between the Wits School of the Arts, Johannesburg, South Africa and the Ecole Cantonale d’art du Valais in Sierre, Switzerland. In 2022 Marx participated in the Ekard Residency in Wassenaar, the Netherlands. Marx recently collaborated with Wolff Architects (Cape Town) on the facade of the Bahá’í Temple in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, where her design was clad in 135 000 tiles across the temple exterior.
Marx is represented by Whatiftheworld in Cape Town, and has presented six solo exhibitions at their Cape Town gallery since 2013. Recent solo exhibitions include Skin of the eye (2023); There there (2020); and Chorus (2019). In 2024, Marx was invited by curator Sean O’Toole to present a solo booth in the Investec Cape Town Art Fair’s SOLO section.
Recent selected group exhibitions include Times goes Bye, curated by Max Mellvil and Claire Johnson at The Ramp, Cape Town (2024); Things take time, time takes things, curated by Bella Knemeyer and Amy Watson at Pool x Field Station in Cape Town (2024); Approximations to a voice: Ellipsis, at the Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery for the 2024 Free State Arts Festival in Bloemfontein, South Africa (2024); Artwords, curated by Jean Dreyer at the Glen Carlou Art Gallery in Klapmuts (2023); A pebble in the mouth (curator) for Turbine Art Fair’s “Off Grid” in 2022; The Phoenix Runway, curated by RESERVOIR at Whatiftheworld in Cape Town (2022); Ex Libris, curated by Barbara Wildenboer for Everard Read at Leeu Estate in Franschhoek, South Africa (2022) and Women’s Work at the IZIKO South African National Gallery in Cape Town (2016). In 2013, Marx was included in the 55th Venice Biennale, in the exhibition titled Imaginary Fact for the South African Pavilion.
Her work has been included in presentations at Art Brussels, Artissima, Abu Dhabi Art Fair, as well as editions of FNB Art Jobrug and the Investec Cape Town Art Fair. Marx is represented in the collections such as the Norval Foundation’s Homestead Collection (South Africa), the Renee and Robert Drake Collection (Netherlands), the Arslanian Group Collection (Belgium), the Goethe Institute (South Africa).
Maja Marx | born 1977, South Africa
Maja Marx approaches painting as an activation of surface, mapping found compositions onto canvas and allowing the process to proliferate. With each layer responding to the one beneath it, her paintings are equal parts rhythmic and ruminatory. The proximity to the canvas from which Marx paints imbues each artwork with a vivid legibility, that it might read as a stratified rockface, textured cardboard, or the shorthand notations of an engineer. Both Longhand (2024) and Farsight (2024) extend meditations on the thought processes that occur when painting in a dedicated studio environment. Longhand, a large-scale painting that stretches 23 meters to measure the southern corner and walls of a building, evokes the colour and growth of nearby lichens. While Longhand ought to be viewed from afar, Farsight demands closer observation – the eye’s mechanics obscuring reality to suggest a plane that extends beyond the painting’s surface.
Maja Marx was born in 1977 in South Africa, and is currently living and working in Cape Town, South Africa. Marx received an MFA in Fine Art from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2008. She is a fellow of the Ampersand Foundation (New York/ Johannesburg) and a participant of MAPS (Master of Arts in Public Spheres), an exchange between the Wits School of the Arts, Johannesburg, South Africa and the Ecole Cantonale d’art du Valais in Sierre, Switzerland. In 2022 Marx participated in the Ekard Residency in Wassenaar, the Netherlands. Marx recently collaborated with Wolff Architects (Cape Town) on the facade of the Bahá’í Temple in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, where her design was clad in 135 000 tiles across the temple exterior.
Marx is represented by Whatiftheworld in Cape Town, and has presented six solo exhibitions at their Cape Town gallery since 2013. Recent solo exhibitions include Skin of the eye (2023); There there (2020); and Chorus (2019). In 2024, Marx was invited by curator Sean O’Toole to present a solo booth in the Investec Cape Town Art Fair’s SOLO section.
Recent selected group exhibitions include Times goes Bye, curated by Max Mellvil and Claire Johnson at The Ramp, Cape Town (2024); Things take time, time takes things, curated by Bella Knemeyer and Amy Watson at Pool x Field Station in Cape Town (2024); Approximations to a voice: Ellipsis, at the Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery for the 2024 Free State Arts Festival in Bloemfontein, South Africa (2024); Artwords, curated by Jean Dreyer at the Glen Carlou Art Gallery in Klapmuts (2023); A pebble in the mouth (curator) for Turbine Art Fair’s “Off Grid” in 2022; The Phoenix Runway, curated by RESERVOIR at Whatiftheworld in Cape Town (2022); Ex Libris, curated by Barbara Wildenboer for Everard Read at Leeu Estate in Franschhoek, South Africa (2022) and Women’s Work at the IZIKO South African National Gallery in Cape Town (2016). In 2013, Marx was included in the 55th Venice Biennale, in the exhibition titled Imaginary Fact for the South African Pavilion.
Her work has been included in presentations at Art Brussels, Artissima, Abu Dhabi Art Fair, as well as editions of FNB Art Jobrug and the Investec Cape Town Art Fair. Marx is represented in the collections such as the Norval Foundation’s Homestead Collection (South Africa), the Renee and Robert Drake Collection (Netherlands), the Arslanian Group Collection (Belgium), the Goethe Institute (South Africa).
Michele Mathison | born 1977, South Africa
Michele Mathison works across mediums to consider the shifting dynamics of South Africa’s social, political, and economic conditions. In sculptures and installations, he makes reference to familiar objects and materials. Reflecting on their historical position, contemporary usage, and societal value, he monumentalises their purity of form and function. In Field, copper pipes are wedged into a bed of granite. Manufactured for plumbing, they allude to the use of water to cool both tools and stone during the mining process. With copper theft causing a deterioration of infrastructure, Mathison elucidates poverty’s cyclical nature. Through his Hard Lines works, Mathison offers a metaphor for South Africa’s social housing crisis. Reminiscent of informal shelters in Cape Town’s city centre, the pulled lines of the artwork’s outer form suggest fragility. Its inherent solidity, however, recalls the fabric folds of a marble Renaissance sculpture.
Michele Mathison was born in 1977, South Africa, and grew up in Harare, Zimbabwe. Mathison completed his BFA at the Michaelis School of Fine Arts, at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Most recently, Mathison’s work was acquired by the CELINE Art Project, curated by Hedi Slimane for Celine Shanghai, Taipei and Hangzhou.
Selected solo exhibitions include: CIVILIAN (2023) and Over and Over (2021), both at Whatiftheworld Gallery in Cape Town; Dissolution (2018) and Uproot (2016) both at Tyburn Gallery, London, UK. Mathison’s work notably formed part of the Zimbabwean pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, with the same body work later exhibited at the inauguratory exhibition at the Zeitz MOCAA museum in 2017.
In 2021, the artist completed a series of three significant public sculptures, commissioned by North-West University and installed on various sites on campus. In 2018, he presented the large-scale work Parallax at Frieze Sculpture in London, while in 2017 he installed the public sculpture Angular Mass for the V&A Waterfront and Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town.
Selected group exhibitions include: Falling Awake curated by RESERVOIR at The Fourth, Cape Town in 2021; Inner Landscapes at Galleria Anna Marra, Rome, Italy in 2019; Broken English at Tyburn Gallery, London in 2015; as well as various international art fairs between 2015 and 2024 including Artissima, Miart, 1:54 London and Cape Town Art Fair.
In addition to CELINE, Mathison’s work is included in collections such as the Norval Foundation’s Homestead collection, the Zeitz MOCAA permanent collection, the Leridon Collection, Spier Arts Trust and the Standard Bank Art Collection.
Michele Mathison | born 1977, South Africa
Michele Mathison works across mediums to consider the shifting dynamics of South Africa’s social, political, and economic conditions. In sculptures and installations, he makes reference to familiar objects and materials. Reflecting on their historical position, contemporary usage, and societal value, he monumentalises their purity of form and function. In Field, copper pipes are wedged into a bed of granite. Manufactured for plumbing, they allude to the use of water to cool both tools and stone during the mining process. With copper theft causing a deterioration of infrastructure, Mathison elucidates poverty’s cyclical nature. Through his Hard Lines works, Mathison offers a metaphor for South Africa’s social housing crisis. Reminiscent of informal shelters in Cape Town’s city centre, the pulled lines of the artwork’s outer form suggest fragility. Its inherent solidity, however, recalls the fabric folds of a marble Renaissance sculpture.
Michele Mathison was born in 1977, South Africa, and grew up in Harare, Zimbabwe. Mathison completed his BFA at the Michaelis School of Fine Arts, at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Most recently, Mathison’s work was acquired by the CELINE Art Project, curated by Hedi Slimane for Celine Shanghai, Taipei and Hangzhou.
Selected solo exhibitions include: CIVILIAN (2023) and Over and Over (2021), both at Whatiftheworld Gallery in Cape Town; Dissolution (2018) and Uproot (2016) both at Tyburn Gallery, London, UK. Mathison’s work notably formed part of the Zimbabwean pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, with the same body work later exhibited at the inauguratory exhibition at the Zeitz MOCAA museum in 2017.
In 2021, the artist completed a series of three significant public sculptures, commissioned by North-West University and installed on various sites on campus. In 2018, he presented the large-scale work Parallax at Frieze Sculpture in London, while in 2017 he installed the public sculpture Angular Mass for the V&A Waterfront and Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town.
Selected group exhibitions include: Falling Awake curated by RESERVOIR at The Fourth, Cape Town in 2021; Inner Landscapes at Galleria Anna Marra, Rome, Italy in 2019; Broken English at Tyburn Gallery, London in 2015; as well as various international art fairs between 2015 and 2024 including Artissima, Miart, 1:54 London and Cape Town Art Fair.
In addition to CELINE, Mathison’s work is included in collections such as the Norval Foundation’s Homestead collection, the Zeitz MOCAA permanent collection, the Leridon Collection, Spier Arts Trust and the Standard Bank Art Collection.
Michele Mathison | born 1977, South Africa
Michele Mathison works across mediums to consider the shifting dynamics of South Africa’s social, political, and economic conditions. In sculptures and installations, he makes reference to familiar objects and materials. Reflecting on their historical position, contemporary usage, and societal value, he monumentalises their purity of form and function. In Field, copper pipes are wedged into a bed of granite. Manufactured for plumbing, they allude to the use of water to cool both tools and stone during the mining process. With copper theft causing a deterioration of infrastructure, Mathison elucidates poverty’s cyclical nature. Through his Hard Lines works, Mathison offers a metaphor for South Africa’s social housing crisis. Reminiscent of informal shelters in Cape Town’s city centre, the pulled lines of the artwork’s outer form suggest fragility. Its inherent solidity, however, recalls the fabric folds of a marble Renaissance sculpture.
Michele Mathison was born in 1977, South Africa, and grew up in Harare, Zimbabwe. Mathison completed his BFA at the Michaelis School of Fine Arts, at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Most recently, Mathison’s work was acquired by the CELINE Art Project, curated by Hedi Slimane for Celine Shanghai, Taipei and Hangzhou.
Selected solo exhibitions include: CIVILIAN (2023) and Over and Over (2021), both at Whatiftheworld Gallery in Cape Town; Dissolution (2018) and Uproot (2016) both at Tyburn Gallery, London, UK. Mathison’s work notably formed part of the Zimbabwean pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, with the same body work later exhibited at the inauguratory exhibition at the Zeitz MOCAA museum in 2017.
In 2021, the artist completed a series of three significant public sculptures, commissioned by North-West University and installed on various sites on campus. In 2018, he presented the large-scale work Parallax at Frieze Sculpture in London, while in 2017 he installed the public sculpture Angular Mass for the V&A Waterfront and Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town.
Selected group exhibitions include: Falling Awake curated by RESERVOIR at The Fourth, Cape Town in 2021; Inner Landscapes at Galleria Anna Marra, Rome, Italy in 2019; Broken English at Tyburn Gallery, London in 2015; as well as various international art fairs between 2015 and 2024 including Artissima, Miart, 1:54 London and Cape Town Art Fair.
In addition to CELINE, Mathison’s work is included in collections such as the Norval Foundation’s Homestead collection, the Zeitz MOCAA permanent collection, the Leridon Collection, Spier Arts Trust and the Standard Bank Art Collection.
Michele Mathison | born 1977, South Africa
Michele Mathison works across mediums to consider the shifting dynamics of South Africa’s social, political, and economic conditions. In sculptures and installations, he makes reference to familiar objects and materials. Reflecting on their historical position, contemporary usage, and societal value, he monumentalises their purity of form and function. In Field, copper pipes are wedged into a bed of granite. Manufactured for plumbing, they allude to the use of water to cool both tools and stone during the mining process. With copper theft causing a deterioration of infrastructure, Mathison elucidates poverty’s cyclical nature. Through his Hard Lines works, Mathison offers a metaphor for South Africa’s social housing crisis. Reminiscent of informal shelters in Cape Town’s city centre, the pulled lines of the artwork’s outer form suggest fragility. Its inherent solidity, however, recalls the fabric folds of a marble Renaissance sculpture.
Michele Mathison was born in 1977, South Africa, and grew up in Harare, Zimbabwe. Mathison completed his BFA at the Michaelis School of Fine Arts, at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Most recently, Mathison’s work was acquired by the CELINE Art Project, curated by Hedi Slimane for Celine Shanghai, Taipei and Hangzhou.
Selected solo exhibitions include: CIVILIAN (2023) and Over and Over (2021), both at Whatiftheworld Gallery in Cape Town; Dissolution (2018) and Uproot (2016) both at Tyburn Gallery, London, UK. Mathison’s work notably formed part of the Zimbabwean pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, with the same body work later exhibited at the inauguratory exhibition at the Zeitz MOCAA museum in 2017.
In 2021, the artist completed a series of three significant public sculptures, commissioned by North-West University and installed on various sites on campus. In 2018, he presented the large-scale work Parallax at Frieze Sculpture in London, while in 2017 he installed the public sculpture Angular Mass for the V&A Waterfront and Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town.
Selected group exhibitions include: Falling Awake curated by RESERVOIR at The Fourth, Cape Town in 2021; Inner Landscapes at Galleria Anna Marra, Rome, Italy in 2019; Broken English at Tyburn Gallery, London in 2015; as well as various international art fairs between 2015 and 2024 including Artissima, Miart, 1:54 London and Cape Town Art Fair.
In addition to CELINE, Mathison’s work is included in collections such as the Norval Foundation’s Homestead collection, the Zeitz MOCAA permanent collection, the Leridon Collection, Spier Arts Trust and the Standard Bank Art Collection.
Seretse Moletsane | born 1981, South Africa
In his process-driven artworks, Seretse Moletsane considers the converging themes of identity, ancestry, and spirituality. Working intuitively, he employs such symbolic materials as soil, cow dung, and marela – a brightly-coloured powder paint favoured by traditional muralists. In Colour Fields, Study I (2024), Moletsane mixes soil and cow dung to create textural planes. Delineated from the rest of the canvas by a band of blue pigment, the lower plane recalls the texture of drought-cracked earth. Moletsane’s use of marela pays tribute to the history of abstraction in Southern Africa, with rainwater prompting reflection on rebirth and the cyclicality of life.
Seretse Moletsane was born in 1981 in Soweto and Currently lives and works in Pretoria, South Africa. He obtained his B-tech degree in Fine and Applied Arts in 2008 at Tshwane University of Technology, with printmaking and painting as subjects. He was a participant of the first MTN young curators programme in 2002, and in 2015 was selected as a finalist for the SA Taxi Award (top 10). In he 2021 was selected as a Javett Art Centre Visionary Award finalist (top 5).
Moletsane is a multi-disciplinary artist and curator at Modern Art Projects South Africa (MAPSA) in Richmond, South Africa, since 2018. Moletsane’s work is conceptually rooted in intuitive art and tapping into spirituality, ancestry and identity. He currently works notably in the medium of soil, cow dung and marela - a brightly coloured powder paint used by traditional muralists, to explore the rich heritage of abstraction within Southern Africa.
Most recently, Moletsane presented a solo exhibition, titled Odyssey, at The Viewing Room gallery in Tshwane, South Africa in 2024. Selected group exhibitions include: iSenzo Sak’dala, curated by Lebo Kekana, at RESERVOIR in Cape Town, South Africa in 2024; Shifting Focus, at the University of Pretoria Gallery in 2023; Ex-Libris at Everard Read Gallery in Franschhoek, South Africa in 2022; Beads and AIR artist residency at MAPSA in Richmond in 2021; Toyota US Woordfees, curated by Liza Grobler, in Stellenbosch, South Africa in 2020; and Young Collectors, curated by Shenaz Mohamed, at Fried Contemporary in Tshwane in 2017.
Richard Mudariki | born 1985, Zimbabwe
To Richard Mudariki, painting constitutes a mode of social commentary. Through parodies of Zimbabwe’s political landscape, he interrogates such phenomena as the corruption of government, poor service delivery, and the hyperinflation of basic goods. In addition to satirising political events, Mudariki inserts caricatures of political figures into comicalimpressions of famous artworks. Divergent in style, Kufa nenyota makumbo ari mumvura (to die of thirst while your feet are in water) (2018) comprises an image divided into three planes. Juxtaposing persistent poverty with Zimbabwe’s endowments of mineral recourses and fertile land, Mudariki extends reflections on the broader themes of social stratification, class division, and the hoarding of assets by Zimbabwe’s elite.
Born and educated in Zimbabwe, Richard Mudariki studied under the mentorship of renowned painter Helen Lieros and Greg Shaw at Gallery Delta in Harare. He subsequently moved to South Africa and is now based in Cape Town. Mudariki holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts Degree in Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, and Museum Studies.
Known for his original modernist paintings full of social commentary on various issues in Africa, Mudariki has presented solo exhibitions in Harare, Cape Town, Paris and New York and his work has been included in curated survey exhibitions at prestigious venues including IZIKO South African National Gallery, Cape Town and ZEITZ Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA), Cape Town.
His recent solo exhibitions include Gore Ra at Barnard Gallery in Cape Town (2020); Mubvakure at Gallery Polaris in Paris, France (2019); Politics of Painting at 1- 54 Contemporary Art Fair in New York, USA (2019); Mawonero Angu at Barnard Gallery, Cape Town (2018) and an early career retrospective titled Mutara Wenguva (Time Line) at the Sanlam Art Gallery in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Selected group shows include: Africa Supernova at the Kunsthal Kade Amersfoort, Netherlands in 2023-2024; ECHO, a group exhibition and Tributaries: Contemporary Zimbabwean Narratives, both at Barnard gallery in Cape Town in 2023; Observer and Commentator, a dual exhibition with Kufa Makwavarara at ARTCO Gallery in Berlin, Germany in 2022; Artist United at Galerie Polaris, Paris (2020); African Characters at OSART Gallery, Milan, Italy (2020); Five Bhob, Painting at the End of an Era at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) in Cape Town, (2019); a travelling exhibition titled Centennial: 100 Years of Collecting from the Sanlam Art Collection (2019) and Filling in the Gaps at the IZIKO South African National Gallery in Cape Town (2019).
Mudariki has participated in artist residencies at the ZEITZ MOCAA, Cape Town, as well as the Fountainhead residency in Miami, USA. His work is represented in the collections of IZIKO South African National Gallery, Cape Town; SANLAM, Cape Town & Johannesburg; Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town; The Leridon Collection, Paris; The West Collection, Philadelphia, USA and the Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Jody Paulsen | born 1987, South Africa
Jody Paulsen’s felt collages are politically aware and have a way of exploring culture through its visual footprint with nuance and ease. The works present as odes to brighter days, postcards to the past and to the future that bear witness to the barrage of visual media that assault us in our everyday commutes. Paulsen takes note of the language of the memoir, and translates it into tapestries of billboard dialect, ready for instant consumption, enticing in the softness of the folds of the felt, and the familiarity of repetition. His work Brothers with imperfect timing (2020) forms part of three coming-of-age montages, exploring the vulnerability of boys in the Cape Flats and their almost inevitable descent into gangsterism. The title references a documentary on Abdullah Ibrahim, a pianist and musician who hailed from Mannenberg – making note of how he associates the loss of innocence with the place he grew up in, eventually leaving South Africa. Paulsen collages gang signs alongside military insignia, pointing out the convergence of violence across cultures, speaking back to how colonial rule and its legacy have influenced the current landscape of toxic masculinity in South Africa.
Jody Paulsen was born in 1987 in Cape Town, South Africa, where he lived and worked until 2023. He currently resides in Spain. Paulsen has an MFA from the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Arts, where he received the Katrine Harries Print Cabinet Award, as well as the Jules Kramer Departmental Scholarship Award in 2012.
Selected group exhibitions include: Matereality at Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town (2020); Dress Up, Speak Up: Regalia and Resistance at 21c Museum Hotels in Cincinnati, USA (2018); Radical Love, at the Ford Foundation Gallery in New York City, USA (2018); After the Thrill is Gone: Fashion, Politics and Culture in Contemporary South African Art, curated by Andrew Hennlich, at Richmond Centre for Visual Arts, Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, USA; All Things Being Equal at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) in Cape Town (2017); Making Africa: A Continent of Contemporary Design, curated by Amelie Klein and Okwui Enwezor at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany and Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain (2015). His work forms part of collections including the Zeitz (MOCAA) (South Africa); The Leridon Collection in (France); Sovereign Art Foundation (Hong Kong, Singapore, UK, South Africa); and the 21C Museums Hotel (USA).
Jody Paulsen | born 1987, South Africa
Paulsen’s 4 Spoilt Boyz (2020) is a coming of age drama, engaging in multiple acts. Paulsen describes the work as encompassing ‘Coloured boyhood nostalgia’ complete with the Jumpman from the original Nike Air Jordan’s campaign. Here, the Jumpman is beheaded midair by the words ‘Dead or Alive’ strung across his waist like a checkerboard finish line that cuts both the body, and the artwork in half. The visual symbology of the lower panel’s diorama is encased in a stamp-like trimming, distancing the imagery both in space and time. It is removed from the present but brought into focus with the depiction of the Kramat of Mohamed Hassen Ghaibie, situated in Cape Town on Signal Hill. The image is placed front and centre as a site of memory and spectacle, tying together religious rituals with other boyish ritualistic followings with the likes of sports teams, souped-up cars as status symbols and the depiction of the fast and the furious. Live fast, die young is the pervasive narrative of the vernacular – words often written in vinyl on the back windshield of the car, with prayer beads or a tiny plastic Jesus swaying over the dashboard.
Jody Paulsen was born in 1987 in Cape Town, South Africa, where he lived and worked until 2023. He currently resides in Spain. Paulsen has an MFA from the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Arts, where he received the Katrine Harries Print Cabinet Award, as well as the Jules Kramer Departmental Scholarship Award in 2012.
Selected group exhibitions include: Matereality at Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town (2020); Dress Up, Speak Up: Regalia and Resistance at 21c Museum Hotels in Cincinnati, USA (2018); Radical Love, at the Ford Foundation Gallery in New York City, USA (2018); After the Thrill is Gone: Fashion, Politics and Culture in Contemporary South African Art, curated by Andrew Hennlich, at Richmond Centre for Visual Arts, Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, USA; All Things Being Equal at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) in Cape Town (2017); Making Africa: A Continent of Contemporary Design, curated by Amelie Klein and Okwui Enwezor at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany and Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain (2015). His work forms part of collections including the Zeitz (MOCAA) (South Africa); The Leridon Collection in (France); Sovereign Art Foundation (Hong Kong, Singapore, UK, South Africa); and the 21C Museums Hotel (USA).
Jody Paulsen | born 1987, South Africa
The focal point in A Thing of Beauty (2020) is on a building which used to be called the Luxurama, located in Park Road, Wynberg in Cape Town – a mixed race cinema that served multiple generations over the course of the apartheid era as a meeting place of civic duty and a hub of political awareness. In its peak, it had the largest screen in the country while also functioning as a theatre for performances of various kinds. For Paulsen, the Luxurama is reminiscent of the nostalgia as experienced by his mother for whom the space was a gathering place and held many good memories. But the Luxurama was more than that to many, as a space that instigated public awareness of the atrocities of 1985, the year in which student protests resulted in the arrest and conviction of seven youths aged between 14 and 18 who were detained, charged with treason and imprisoned in Pollsmoor, a maximum security prison, for two years as a way of making an example of them. The incident sparked a shift in the political climate, which banded communities together who were previously pitted against each other. The physical space functions as an icon of solidarity and community – Paulsen’s work is an ode to the space as a memorial and proposition of the building as a heritage site.
Jody Paulsen was born in 1987 in Cape Town, South Africa, where he lived and worked until 2023. He currently resides in Spain. In 2009 Paulsen graduated from the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Arts specialising in Print Media. He was awarded the Katrine Harries Print Cabinet Award in the same year. In 2012 Jody Paulsen received the Jules Kramer Departmental Scholarship Award and went on to complete his Masters Degree with his presentation titled What You Want, Whenever You Want It in 2013.
Paulsen opened his first solo exhibition in 2017, titled Pushing Thirty, at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town, followed by a solo presentation at UNTITLED, Art in Miami Beach in the USA. Further solo exhibitions include Open Arms at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town, and a solo presentation at Miart in Milan, Italy, both in 2023; and Water Me, at SMAC Gallery in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2018.
Paulsen’s participation in group exhibitions includes: Matereality at Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town (2020); a solo body of work at The Armory Show as part of the Focus Section in New York City, USA (2019); Dress Up, Speak Up: Regalia and Resistance at 21c Museum Hotels in Cincinnati, USA (2018) and Radical Love, at the Ford Foundation Gallery in New York City, USA (2018); After the Thrill is Gone: Fashion, Politics and Culture in Contemporary South African Art, curated by Andrew Hennlich, a travelling exhibition starting at Richmond Centre for Visual Arts, Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, USA; Passion Fruit, at Temporary Storage Gallery in New York City, USA; all in 2018; All Things Being Equal at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) in Cape Town (2017); Making Africa: A Continent of Contemporary Design, curated by Amelie Klein and Okwui Enwezor travelling to the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany and Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain (2015).
In 2012 Paulsen and the fashion designer Adriaan Kuiters collaborated to create the fashion line AKJP. Together they have presented numerous collections at events including: Pitti Uomo 89 in Florence, Italy and the Vogue Fashion Dubai Experience at The Dubai Mall in Dubai, UAE in 2015. In 2019 Paulsen collaborated with Neil Barrett to present their Men’s Spring 2020 runway collection. Paulsen continues to expand and present new collections, internationally and locally.
His work forms part of collections including the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) (South Africa); The Leridon Collection in (France); Sovereign Art Foundation (Hong Kong, Singapore, UK, Guernsey, South Africa); The Royal Portfolio Collection (South Africa) and the 21C Museums Hotel (Louisville, USA).
Mankebe Seakgoe | born 1998, South Africa
Mankebe Seakgoe was born in 1998 in Pietersburg, Limpopo, South Africa, where she is currently based. In 2019 she completed her BFA at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. In her work, Seakgoe engages questions and modes of articulation, using the self as a sounding board to connect distant stories and voices. When she first resettled in Johannesburg, Seakgoe struggled with verbal communication and spent periods of time in silence, listening and observing the ways language influences the way we think. Making reference to black thought and literature, she primarily uses charcoal, textual drawings and sculpture to explore linguistic determinism through poetry and storytelling as a way to finally and fully express thoughts and conversations with her past, present, future selves.
The artist’s recent group exhibitions include participation in I miss myself the most, at STEVENSON Gallery in Johannesburg (2023); I hear you, a dual show with Tzung-Hui Lauren Lee at BKhz Gallery in Johannesburg (2023); Brown Flesh Tales by Son of Langa Art Studio, Johannesburg (2023); INDEX 2023, curated by Nkhensani Mkhari at RMB Latitudes in Johannesburg (2023); If Not Now, Then When at BKhz Gallery in Johannesburg (2022); Identity & Community by Son of Langa Art Studio in Johannesburg (2022); Paper as a political medium at FORMS Gallery in Johannesburg (2022); and Towards new frontiers by Location Studio Practice at Play Braamfontein, Johannesburg (2022).
Seakgoe’s work is included in the Wilhelm Schürmann collection (Germany) and has been featured in Zimbabwean artist Kudzanai Chiurai’s collection ‘The Library of things we forgot to remember’.
Mankebe Seakgoe | born 1998, South Africa
Mankebe Seakgoe was born in 1998 in Pietersburg, Limpopo, South Africa, where she is currently based. In 2019 she completed her BFA at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. In her work, Seakgoe engages questions and modes of articulation, using the self as a sounding board to connect distant stories and voices. When she first resettled in Johannesburg, Seakgoe struggled with verbal communication and spent periods of time in silence, listening and observing the ways language influences the way we think. Making reference to black thought and literature, she primarily uses charcoal, textual drawings and sculpture to explore linguistic determinism through poetry and storytelling as a way to finally and fully express thoughts and conversations with her past, present, future selves.
The artist’s recent group exhibitions include participation in I miss myself the most, at STEVENSON Gallery in Johannesburg (2023); I hear you, a dual show with Tzung-Hui Lauren Lee at BKhz Gallery in Johannesburg (2023); Brown Flesh Tales by Son of Langa Art Studio, Johannesburg (2023); INDEX 2023, curated by Nkhensani Mkhari at RMB Latitudes in Johannesburg (2023); If Not Now, Then When at BKhz Gallery in Johannesburg (2022); Identity & Community by Son of Langa Art Studio in Johannesburg (2022); Paper as a political medium at FORMS Gallery in Johannesburg (2022); and Towards new frontiers by Location Studio Practice at Play Braamfontein, Johannesburg (2022).
Seakgoe’s work is included in the Wilhelm Schürmann collection (Germany) and has been featured in Zimbabwean artist Kudzanai Chiurai’s collection ‘The Library of things we forgot to remember’.
Mankebe Seakgoe | born 1998, South Africa
Mankebe Seakgoe was born in 1998 in Pietersburg, Limpopo, South Africa, where she is currently based. In 2019 she completed her BFA at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. In her work, Seakgoe engages questions and modes of articulation, using the self as a sounding board to connect distant stories and voices. When she first resettled in Johannesburg, Seakgoe struggled with verbal communication and spent periods of time in silence, listening and observing the ways language influences the way we think. Making reference to black thought and literature, she primarily uses charcoal, textual drawings and sculpture to explore linguistic determinism through poetry and storytelling as a way to finally and fully express thoughts and conversations with her past, present, future selves.
The artist’s recent group exhibitions include participation in I miss myself the most, at STEVENSON Gallery in Johannesburg (2023); I hear you, a dual show with Tzung-Hui Lauren Lee at BKhz Gallery in Johannesburg (2023); Brown Flesh Tales by Son of Langa Art Studio, Johannesburg (2023); INDEX 2023, curated by Nkhensani Mkhari at RMB Latitudes in Johannesburg (2023); If Not Now, Then When at BKhz Gallery in Johannesburg (2022); Identity & Community by Son of Langa Art Studio in Johannesburg (2022); Paper as a political medium at FORMS Gallery in Johannesburg (2022); and Towards new frontiers by Location Studio Practice at Play Braamfontein, Johannesburg (2022).
Seakgoe’s work is included in the Wilhelm Schürmann collection (Germany) and has been featured in Zimbabwean artist Kudzanai Chiurai’s collection ‘The Library of things we forgot to remember’.
Mankebe Seakgoe | geboren 1998, Südafrika
Mankebe Seakgoe was born in 1998 in Pietersburg, Limpopo, South Africa, where she is currently based. In 2019 she completed her BFA at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. In her work, Seakgoe engages questions and modes of articulation, using the self as a sounding board to connect distant stories and voices. When she first resettled in Johannesburg, Seakgoe struggled with verbal communication and spent periods of time in silence, listening and observing the ways language influences the way we think. Making reference to black thought and literature, she primarily uses charcoal, textual drawings and sculpture to explore linguistic determinism through poetry and storytelling as a way to finally and fully express thoughts and conversations with her past, present, future selves.
The artist’s recent group exhibitions include participation in I miss myself the most, at STEVENSON Gallery in Johannesburg (2023); I hear you, a dual show with Tzung-Hui Lauren Lee at BKhz Gallery in Johannesburg (2023); Brown Flesh Tales by Son of Langa Art Studio, Johannesburg (2023); INDEX 2023, curated by Nkhensani Mkhari at RMB Latitudes in Johannesburg (2023); If Not Now, Then When at BKhz Gallery in Johannesburg (2022); Identity & Community by Son of Langa Art Studio in Johannesburg (2022); Paper as a political medium at FORMS Gallery in Johannesburg (2022); and Towards new frontiers by Location Studio Practice at Play Braamfontein, Johannesburg (2022).
Seakgoe’s work is included in the Wilhelm Schürmann collection (Germany) and has been featured in Zimbabwean artist Kudzanai Chiurai’s collection ‘The Library of things we forgot to remember’.
Brett Seiler | b.1995, Zimbabwe
Through his paintings, Brett Seiler creates an interior world which wavers between desire and anxiety. He explores the male body, domestic space, poetry, Queer history, Biblical symbolism, love and alienation, as well as the possibilities of painting as a medium. His experimentation with material, colour, and line has culminated in a unique and carefully honed style. In his search for materials which are both evocative and easily accessible, Seiler’s early paintings included found objects such as old black-and-white photographs and fabric. Though these objects have mostly been stripped away from his most recent paintings, they have been absorbed as visual strategy. The photographs are present in the snapshot-like, narrative atmosphere of the depicted scenes, and in the colour palette and tones. The interest in fabric can be seen in his treatment of the canvas as an important part of the finished work. The rawness of the surface and the sketched quality of the lines add to the feeling that we are witnessing a brief, urgent moment in time which has passed but been memorialised.
Brett Charles Seiler was born in 1994 in Zimbabwe, and currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. He graduated from the Ruth Prowse School of Art in 2015. Solo exhibitions include Luke, Warm at Everard Read in London, UK (2023); Oh, Christopher, M+B, Los Angeles, USA (2022); Gallery Eigen+Art in Berlin, Germany (2022); At some point, I thought I was building a home, Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with Everard Read, South Africa (2022); and Closet at Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg, South Africa (2020).
Selected recent group exhibitions include Things I’d like to remember at Everard Read in Cape Town (2022); In Between Dreams with Gallery Eigen+Berlin in Cape Town (2022); Das Eigene im Fremden - Einblicke in die Sammlung Detlev Blenk at Museum Bensheim in Germany (2022); Hothouse, with Sixty Six in London, UK (2022) Space and Place, curated by Khanya Mashabela at Galerie Eigen+Art in Liepzig, Germany (2021); ODYSSEY at Everard Read in Cape Town (2020); Home Affairs at Waterfront Docks in Cape Town (2019); OUTSIDE at Riebeek Kasteel Gallery in Cape Town (2019); One Straight Hour performed for The Main Complaint at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCCA) in Cape Town (2018).
Guy Simpson | born 1994, South Africa
At first a sculptor of cartoon-like compositions, Guy Simpson has adopted a more nuanced approach to the practice of painting. His paintings, comprising layers of canvas, wall paint, acrylic, and crafting sand, ordinarily mimic the architectural intricacies of the areas surrounding his mother’s home. Through distilling such quotidian details as an adaptor plug, a broken window blind, or the meeting point between skirting board and parquet tiles, the artist emblazons the everyday with a sanctity more often attributed to life’s larger landmarks. Near to our old home (2024) depicts the negative space surrounding a door and its adjacent letter plate, while 12th Street Orange Grove (2024) and Copper and Rust (2024) offer material explorations of the medium – expertly altering the paint’s colour and texture on sheets of layered canvas, Simpson reinscribes his artworks with a sculptural quality.
Guy Simpson was born 1994 in Johannesburg, South Africa, and currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. In 2019 he completed a Bachelor of Contemporary Art from the Cape Town Creative Academy. Simpson is one of four co-founders of the artist- run Under Projects, which between 2022 and 2024 had a physical exhibition space in Cape Town. He was a 2024 shortlist finalist for Gasworks London, UK.
Simpson has presented two solo exhibitions, namely Jacaranda at Everard Read in Cape Town (2024) and House of Fran at THK Gallery in Cape Town (2023). In 2022, he presented Passage, an intervention at A4 Arts Foundation in Cape Town as part of Goods.
Group exhibitions include Under And Out at Under Projects in Cape Town (2023); Liminal States at Thk Gallery in Cape Town (2023); Customs curated By Khanya Mashabela at A4 Arts Foundation in Cape Town (2023); 4x4 Eigen + Art Lab in Berlin, Germany (2023); Interludes with artist Tom Cullberg at Barnard Gallery, Cape Town (2023); Inside Pieces at the Association for Visual Arts Gallery (AVA) in Cape Town (2023); Uninvested, 51 Buitenkant St, Project Space, Cape Town (2022); Untitled 99 at 99 Loop Gallery in Cape Town (2022); Pilot, Co-Curated With Luca Evans at Under Projects in Cape Town (2022); Premise at Joe Prussian in Cape Town (2021); Apartments Vol,1 and 2 by Apartments x The Fourth, at The Fourth in Cape Town (2020); Kernel curated by Nabeeha Mohamed and Grace Cross at Maisons Press in Cape Town (2020); and The Spectacle at The Fourth in Cape Town (2020).
Guy Simpson | born 1994, South Africa
At first a sculptor of cartoon-like compositions, Guy Simpson has adopted a more nuanced approach to the practice of painting. His paintings, comprising layers of canvas, wall paint, acrylic, and crafting sand, ordinarily mimic the architectural intricacies of the areas surrounding his mother’s home. Through distilling such quotidian details as an adaptor plug, a broken window blind, or the meeting point between skirting board and parquet tiles, the artist emblazons the everyday with a sanctity more often attributed to life’s larger landmarks. Near to our old home (2024) depicts the negative space surrounding a door and its adjacent letter plate, while 12th Street Orange Grove (2024) and Copper and Rust (2024) offer material explorations of the medium – expertly altering the paint’s colour and texture on sheets of layered canvas, Simpson reinscribes his artworks with a sculptural quality.
Guy Simpson was born 1994 in Johannesburg, South Africa, and currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. In 2019 he completed a Bachelor of Contemporary Art from the Cape Town Creative Academy. Simpson is one of four co-founders of the artist- run Under Projects, which between 2022 and 2024 had a physical exhibition space in Cape Town. He was a 2024 shortlist finalist for Gasworks London, UK.
Simpson has presented two solo exhibitions, namely Jacaranda at Everard Read in Cape Town (2024) and House of Fran at THK Gallery in Cape Town (2023). In 2022, he presented Passage, an intervention at A4 Arts Foundation in Cape Town as part of Goods.
Group exhibitions include Under And Out at Under Projects in Cape Town (2023); Liminal States at Thk Gallery in Cape Town (2023); Customs curated By Khanya Mashabela at A4 Arts Foundation in Cape Town (2023); 4x4 Eigen + Art Lab in Berlin, Germany (2023); Interludes with artist Tom Cullberg at Barnard Gallery, Cape Town (2023); Inside Pieces at the Association for Visual Arts Gallery (AVA) in Cape Town (2023); Uninvested, 51 Buitenkant St, Project Space, Cape Town (2022); Untitled 99 at 99 Loop Gallery in Cape Town (2022); Pilot, Co-Curated With Luca Evans at Under Projects in Cape Town (2022); Premise at Joe Prussian in Cape Town (2021); Apartments Vol,1 and 2 by Apartments x The Fourth, at The Fourth in Cape Town (2020); Kernel curated by Nabeeha Mohamed and Grace Cross at Maisons Press in Cape Town (2020); and The Spectacle at The Fourth in Cape Town (2020).
Guy Simpson | born 1994, South Africa
At first a sculptor of cartoon-like compositions, Guy Simpson has adopted a more nuanced approach to the practice of painting. His paintings, comprising layers of canvas, wall paint, acrylic, and crafting sand, ordinarily mimic the architectural intricacies of the areas surrounding his mother’s home. Through distilling such quotidian details as an adaptor plug, a broken window blind, or the meeting point between skirting board and parquet tiles, the artist emblazons the everyday with a sanctity more often attributed to life’s larger landmarks. Near to our old home (2024) depicts the negative space surrounding a door and its adjacent letter plate, while 12th Street Orange Grove (2024) and Copper and Rust (2024) offer material explorations of the medium – expertly altering the paint’s colour and texture on sheets of layered canvas, Simpson reinscribes his artworks with a sculptural quality.
Guy Simpson was born 1994 in Johannesburg, South Africa, and currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. In 2019 he completed a Bachelor of Contemporary Art from the Cape Town Creative Academy. Simpson is one of four co-founders of the artist- run Under Projects, which between 2022 and 2024 had a physical exhibition space in Cape Town. He was a 2024 shortlist finalist for Gasworks London, UK.
Simpson has presented two solo exhibitions, namely Jacaranda at Everard Read in Cape Town (2024) and House of Fran at THK Gallery in Cape Town (2023). In 2022, he presented Passage, an intervention at A4 Arts Foundation in Cape Town as part of Goods.
Group exhibitions include Under And Out at Under Projects in Cape Town (2023); Liminal States at Thk Gallery in Cape Town (2023); Customs curated By Khanya Mashabela at A4 Arts Foundation in Cape Town (2023); 4x4 Eigen + Art Lab in Berlin, Germany (2023); Interludes with artist Tom Cullberg at Barnard Gallery, Cape Town (2023); Inside Pieces at the Association for Visual Arts Gallery (AVA) in Cape Town (2023); Uninvested, 51 Buitenkant St, Project Space, Cape Town (2022); Untitled 99 at 99 Loop Gallery in Cape Town (2022); Pilot, Co-Curated With Luca Evans at Under Projects in Cape Town (2022); Premise at Joe Prussian in Cape Town (2021); Apartments Vol,1 and 2 by Apartments x The Fourth, at The Fourth in Cape Town (2020); Kernel curated by Nabeeha Mohamed and Grace Cross at Maisons Press in Cape Town (2020); and The Spectacle at The Fourth in Cape Town (2020).
Inga Somdyala | born 1994, South Africa
Approaching his practice with a sensitivity towards various mediums, Inga Somdyala defies the conventional categorisations of painter or sculptor. Applying soil and earth pigments to textiles, Somdyala extends reflections on colonial and apartheid legacies and the negotiation thereof by South Africa’s youth. His canvases, stained, smeared, and often buried, oscillate between body and landscape, and garment and flag. In POMPA FUNEBRIS II (2024), the title derived from a Roman funeral procession, Somdyala portrays the colours of the South African flag in pigments extracted from the earth. The sixth colour, blue, is rendered in shweshwe fabric – introduced to the Xhosa by German settlers in the Eastern Cape, it constitutes a reminder of German colonialism. Incwadi Enomlomo Obomvu (studies for Blood of The Lamb) (2024) recalls the biblical motif of the sacrificial lamb. To imitate the texture of sheep hide, Somdyala distressed the canvas and combined such earth pigments as ochre, iron oxide, chalk, and ash. While the first and second panels appear the inner and outer skins of a lamb, the third – slimmer and monochrome red – suggests the book block of a bible.
Inga Somdyala is an interdisciplinary artist born in Komani, Eastern Cape, South Africa, living and working in Cape Town. He recently completed an MFA (2019) at the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Art. Somdyala is the 2022 recipient of the MTN New Contemporaries Award. Artist residencies include a three month residency at the Cité International des Arts in Paris, France (2023) and the Tankwa Artscape Residency in the Tankwa Karoo, South Africa (2023), as well as the Nirox artist residency at the Cradle of Humankind, South Africa. Somdyala’s solo exhibitions include As Far As The Sea at RESERVOIR in Cape Town (2023) and Adamah, curated by RESERVOIR at Whatiftheworld gallery, Cape Town (2022).
In 2023, Somdyala presented new work in a dual presentation at The Armory Show in New York with WHALTIFTHEWORLD Gallery as well as for a dual presentation at Artissima in Turin, Italy with
RESERVOIR.
Group exhibitions include: Layers: Rock Art Across Space and Time at Nirox Sculpture Park, with a second iteration installed at Brundyn Arts & Culture’s Boschendal Estate exhibition space and a third iteration is at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) Origins Centre in Johannesburg (2023); Fullhouse and The weight of a stone, both at Blank Projects in Cape Town (2023); Home Strange Home, curated by RESERVOIR at the Krone x WITW Gallery in Tulbagh, South Africa (2022) and Verse at the Association for the Visual Arts (AVA) Gallery (2022); Falling Awake, curated by RESERVOIR at The Fourth in Cape Town (2021); Matereality at the Iziko South African National Gallery (2020); and AMAQABA Vol. 1 a collaborative body of work with Xhanti Zwelendaba at Eclectica Contemporary in Cape Town (2018).
Somdyala’s work is included in the IZIKO South African National Gallery’s collection as well as the Investec Collection in Cape Town.
Inga Somdyala | born 1994, South Africa
Approaching his practice with a sensitivity towards various mediums, Inga Somdyala defies the conventional categorisations of painter or sculptor. Applying soil and earth pigments to textiles, Somdyala extends reflections on colonial and apartheid legacies and the negotiation thereof by South Africa’s youth. His canvases, stained, smeared, and often buried, oscillate between body and landscape, and garment and flag. In POMPA FUNEBRIS II (2024), the title derived from a Roman funeral procession, Somdyala portrays the colours of the South African flag in pigments extracted from the earth. The sixth colour, blue, is rendered in shweshwe fabric – introduced to the Xhosa by German settlers in the Eastern Cape, it constitutes a reminder of German colonialism. Incwadi Enomlomo Obomvu (studies for Blood of The Lamb) (2024) recalls the biblical motif of the sacrificial lamb. To imitate the texture of sheep hide, Somdyala distressed the canvas and combined such earth pigments as ochre, iron oxide, chalk, and ash. While the first and second panels appear the inner and outer skins of a lamb, the third – slimmer and monochrome red – suggests the book block of a bible.
Inga Somdyala is an interdisciplinary artist born in Komani, Eastern Cape, South Africa, living and working in Cape Town. He recently completed an MFA (2019) at the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Art. Somdyala is the 2022 recipient of the MTN New Contemporaries Award. Artist residencies include a three month residency at the Cité International des Arts in Paris, France (2023) and the Tankwa Artscape Residency in the Tankwa Karoo, South Africa (2023), as well as the Nirox artist residency at the Cradle of Humankind, South Africa. Somdyala’s solo exhibitions include As Far As The Sea at RESERVOIR in Cape Town (2023) and Adamah, curated by RESERVOIR at Whatiftheworld gallery, Cape Town (2022).
In 2023, Somdyala presented new work in a dual presentation at The Armory Show in New York with WHALTIFTHEWORLD Gallery as well as for a dual presentation at Artissima in Turin, Italy with
RESERVOIR.
Group exhibitions include: Layers: Rock Art Across Space and Time at Nirox Sculpture Park, with a second iteration installed at Brundyn Arts & Culture’s Boschendal Estate exhibition space and a third iteration is at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) Origins Centre in Johannesburg (2023); Fullhouse and The weight of a stone, both at Blank Projects in Cape Town (2023); Home Strange Home, curated by RESERVOIR at the Krone x WITW Gallery in Tulbagh, South Africa (2022) and Verse at the Association for the Visual Arts (AVA) Gallery (2022); Falling Awake, curated by RESERVOIR at The Fourth in Cape Town (2021); Matereality at the Iziko South African National Gallery (2020); and AMAQABA Vol. 1 a collaborative body of work with Xhanti Zwelendaba at Eclectica Contemporary in Cape Town (2018).
Somdyala’s work is included in the IZIKO South African National Gallery’s collection as well as the Investec Collection in Cape Town.
Atang Tshikare, born 1980, South Africa
Atang Tshikare is a Cape Town-based, self-taught multidisciplinary artist. Born in Bloemfontein in 1980, Atang was influenced from a young age by the visual storytelling and graphic style of his father, an anti-Apartheid activist and illustrator for various pan-African publications and art magazines. Drawing on a deep connection to his own Tswana heritage and other Southern African cultures, Tshikare’s experimental approach to creating work includes various mediums, such as bronze, ceramics, glass, stone, and wood. His work takes inspiration from his fascination with zoomorphic shapes, biomorphic forms, vernacular architecture, and local landscapes. Each form strikes up a dialogue between natural and man-made materials that are organic, minimalistic and invite tactile curiosity.
Most recently Tshikare produced a solo exhibition for Everard Read, Cape Town, entitled Pula e ya na (2024). Further solo exhibitions include Setlhare at Everard Read, Johannesburg (2023); Peo e Atang, at 196 Victoria in Cape Town (2021); Oa Mpona at the Woodstock Foundry, Cape Town (2017); and Not by a witch at World Art in Cape Town (2014).
Selected group exhibition include: iSenzo Sak’dala, curated by Lebo Kekana at RESERVOIR in Cape Town (2024); What I Feel When I Think About The Cosmos, Everard Read in Franschhoek, South Africa (2023), The Object, a group show curated by Sean O’Toole at Under Projects, Cape Town (2023); Promenade pour un Objet d’Exception in Paris (2022). In 2021 Tshikare was one of 17 selected artists to contribute to the Dior Medallion Chair exhibition that showcased at Superblue in Miami, USA, at Salone Del Mobile in Milan, Italy, and at Art ‘n Dior in Shanghai, China. Also in 2021 Tshikare formed part of Before yesterday we could fly at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, USA. Further group shows include Inside Out at Kin And Company, New York (2020); Closer Still at Southern Guild, Cape Town (2020); Still Here Tomorrow at Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town (2019); and AfroVibes at Fierce POP, Amsterdam (2018).
Atang Tshikare, born 1980, South Africa
Atang Tshikare is a Cape Town-based, self-taught multidisciplinary artist. Born in Bloemfontein in 1980, Atang was influenced from a young age by the visual storytelling and graphic style of his father, an anti-Apartheid activist and illustrator for various pan-African publications and art magazines. Drawing on a deep connection to his own Tswana heritage and other Southern African cultures, Tshikare’s experimental approach to creating work includes various mediums, such as bronze, ceramics, glass, stone, and wood. His work takes inspiration from his fascination with zoomorphic shapes, biomorphic forms, vernacular architecture, and local landscapes. Each form strikes up a dialogue between natural and man-made materials that are organic, minimalistic and invite tactile curiosity.
Most recently Tshikare produced a solo exhibition for Everard Read, Cape Town, entitled Pula e ya na (2024). Further solo exhibitions include Setlhare at Everard Read, Johannesburg (2023); Peo e Atang, at 196 Victoria in Cape Town (2021); Oa Mpona at the Woodstock Foundry, Cape Town (2017); and Not by a witch at World Art in Cape Town (2014).
Selected group exhibition include: iSenzo Sak’dala, curated by Lebo Kekana at RESERVOIR in Cape Town (2024); What I Feel When I Think About The Cosmos, Everard Read in Franschhoek, South Africa (2023), The Object, a group show curated by Sean O’Toole at Under Projects, Cape Town (2023); Promenade pour un Objet d’Exception in Paris (2022). In 2021 Tshikare was one of 17 selected artists to contribute to the Dior Medallion Chair exhibition that showcased at Superblue in Miami, USA, at Salone Del Mobile in Milan, Italy, and at Art ‘n Dior in Shanghai, China. Also in 2021 Tshikare formed part of Before yesterday we could fly at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, USA. Further group shows include Inside Out at Kin And Company, New York (2020); Closer Still at Southern Guild, Cape Town (2020); Still Here Tomorrow at Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town (2019); and AfroVibes at Fierce POP, Amsterdam (2018).
Atang Tshikare, born 1980, South Africa
Atang Tshikare is a Cape Town-based, self-taught multidisciplinary artist. Born in Bloemfontein in 1980, Atang was influenced from a young age by the visual storytelling and graphic style of his father, an anti-Apartheid activist and illustrator for various pan-African publications and art magazines. Drawing on a deep connection to his own Tswana heritage and other Southern African cultures, Tshikare’s experimental approach to creating work includes various mediums, such as bronze, ceramics, glass, stone, and wood. His work takes inspiration from his fascination with zoomorphic shapes, biomorphic forms, vernacular architecture, and local landscapes. Each form strikes up a dialogue between natural and man-made materials that are organic, minimalistic and invite tactile curiosity.
Most recently Tshikare produced a solo exhibition for Everard Read, Cape Town, entitled Pula e ya na (2024). Further solo exhibitions include Setlhare at Everard Read, Johannesburg (2023); Peo e Atang, at 196 Victoria in Cape Town (2021); Oa Mpona at the Woodstock Foundry, Cape Town (2017); and Not by a witch at World Art in Cape Town (2014).
Selected group exhibition include: iSenzo Sak’dala, curated by Lebo Kekana at RESERVOIR in Cape Town (2024); What I Feel When I Think About The Cosmos, Everard Read in Franschhoek, South Africa (2023), The Object, a group show curated by Sean O’Toole at Under Projects, Cape Town (2023); Promenade pour un Objet d’Exception in Paris (2022). In 2021 Tshikare was one of 17 selected artists to contribute to the Dior Medallion Chair exhibition that showcased at Superblue in Miami, USA, at Salone Del Mobile in Milan, Italy, and at Art ‘n Dior in Shanghai, China. Also in 2021 Tshikare formed part of Before yesterday we could fly at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, USA. Further group shows include Inside Out at Kin And Company, New York (2020); Closer Still at Southern Guild, Cape Town (2020); Still Here Tomorrow at Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town (2019); and AfroVibes at Fierce POP, Amsterdam (2018).
Atang Tshikare, born 1980, South Africa
Atang Tshikare is a Cape Town-based, self-taught multidisciplinary artist. Born in Bloemfontein in 1980, Atang was influenced from a young age by the visual storytelling and graphic style of his father, an anti-Apartheid activist and illustrator for various pan-African publications and art magazines. Drawing on a deep connection to his own Tswana heritage and other Southern African cultures, Tshikare’s experimental approach to creating work includes various mediums, such as bronze, ceramics, glass, stone, and wood. His work takes inspiration from his fascination with zoomorphic shapes, biomorphic forms, vernacular architecture, and local landscapes. Each form strikes up a dialogue between natural and man-made materials that are organic, minimalistic and invite tactile curiosity.
Most recently Tshikare produced a solo exhibition for Everard Read, Cape Town, entitled Pula e ya na (2024). Further solo exhibitions include Setlhare at Everard Read, Johannesburg (2023); Peo e Atang, at 196 Victoria in Cape Town (2021); Oa Mpona at the Woodstock Foundry, Cape Town (2017); and Not by a witch at World Art in Cape Town (2014).
Selected group exhibition include: iSenzo Sak’dala, curated by Lebo Kekana at RESERVOIR in Cape Town (2024); What I Feel When I Think About The Cosmos, Everard Read in Franschhoek, South Africa (2023), The Object, a group show curated by Sean O’Toole at Under Projects, Cape Town (2023); Promenade pour un Objet d’Exception in Paris (2022). In 2021 Tshikare was one of 17 selected artists to contribute to the Dior Medallion Chair exhibition that showcased at Superblue in Miami, USA, at Salone Del Mobile in Milan, Italy, and at Art ‘n Dior in Shanghai, China. Also in 2021 Tshikare formed part of Before yesterday we could fly at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, USA. Further group shows include Inside Out at Kin And Company, New York (2020); Closer Still at Southern Guild, Cape Town (2020); Still Here Tomorrow at Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town (2019); and AfroVibes at Fierce POP, Amsterdam (2018).
Atang Tshikare, born 1980, South Africa
Atang Tshikare is a Cape Town-based, self-taught multidisciplinary artist. Born in Bloemfontein in 1980, Atang was influenced from a young age by the visual storytelling and graphic style of his father, an anti-Apartheid activist and illustrator for various pan-African publications and art magazines. Drawing on a deep connection to his own Tswana heritage and other Southern African cultures, Tshikare’s experimental approach to creating work includes various mediums, such as bronze, ceramics, glass, stone, and wood. His work takes inspiration from his fascination with zoomorphic shapes, biomorphic forms, vernacular architecture, and local landscapes. Each form strikes up a dialogue between natural and man-made materials that are organic, minimalistic and invite tactile curiosity.
Most recently Tshikare produced a solo exhibition for Everard Read, Cape Town, entitled Pula e ya na (2024). Further solo exhibitions include Setlhare at Everard Read, Johannesburg (2023); Peo e Atang, at 196 Victoria in Cape Town (2021); Oa Mpona at the Woodstock Foundry, Cape Town (2017); and Not by a witch at World Art in Cape Town (2014).
Selected group exhibition include: iSenzo Sak’dala, curated by Lebo Kekana at RESERVOIR in Cape Town (2024); What I Feel When I Think About The Cosmos, Everard Read in Franschhoek, South Africa (2023), The Object, a group show curated by Sean O’Toole at Under Projects, Cape Town (2023); Promenade pour un Objet d’Exception in Paris (2022). In 2021 Tshikare was one of 17 selected artists to contribute to the Dior Medallion Chair exhibition that showcased at Superblue in Miami, USA, at Salone Del Mobile in Milan, Italy, and at Art ‘n Dior in Shanghai, China. Also in 2021 Tshikare formed part of Before yesterday we could fly at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, USA. Further group shows include Inside Out at Kin And Company, New York (2020); Closer Still at Southern Guild, Cape Town (2020); Still Here Tomorrow at Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town (2019); and AfroVibes at Fierce POP, Amsterdam (2018).
Atang Tshikare, born 1980, South Africa
Atang Tshikare is a Cape Town-based, self-taught multidisciplinary artist. Born in Bloemfontein in 1980, Atang was influenced from a young age by the visual storytelling and graphic style of his father, an anti-Apartheid activist and illustrator for various pan-African publications and art magazines. Drawing on a deep connection to his own Tswana heritage and other Southern African cultures, Tshikare’s experimental approach to creating work includes various mediums, such as bronze, ceramics, glass, stone, and wood. His work takes inspiration from his fascination with zoomorphic shapes, biomorphic forms, vernacular architecture, and local landscapes. Each form strikes up a dialogue between natural and man-made materials that are organic, minimalistic and invite tactile curiosity.
Most recently Tshikare produced a solo exhibition for Everard Read, Cape Town, entitled Pula e ya na (2024). Further solo exhibitions include Setlhare at Everard Read, Johannesburg (2023); Peo e Atang, at 196 Victoria in Cape Town (2021); Oa Mpona at the Woodstock Foundry, Cape Town (2017); and Not by a witch at World Art in Cape Town (2014).
Selected group exhibition include: iSenzo Sak’dala, curated by Lebo Kekana at RESERVOIR in Cape Town (2024); What I Feel When I Think About The Cosmos, Everard Read in Franschhoek, South Africa (2023), The Object, a group show curated by Sean O’Toole at Under Projects, Cape Town (2023); Promenade pour un Objet d’Exception in Paris (2022). In 2021 Tshikare was one of 17 selected artists to contribute to the Dior Medallion Chair exhibition that showcased at Superblue in Miami, USA, at Salone Del Mobile in Milan, Italy, and at Art ‘n Dior in Shanghai, China. Also in 2021 Tshikare formed part of Before yesterday we could fly at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, USA. Further group shows include Inside Out at Kin And Company, New York (2020); Closer Still at Southern Guild, Cape Town (2020); Still Here Tomorrow at Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town (2019); and AfroVibes at Fierce POP, Amsterdam (2018).
Atang Tshikare, born 1980, South Africa
Atang Tshikare is a Cape Town-based, self-taught multidisciplinary artist. Born in Bloemfontein in 1980, Atang was influenced from a young age by the visual storytelling and graphic style of his father, an anti-Apartheid activist and illustrator for various pan-African publications and art magazines. Drawing on a deep connection to his own Tswana heritage and other Southern African cultures, Tshikare’s experimental approach to creating work includes various mediums, such as bronze, ceramics, glass, stone, and wood. His work takes inspiration from his fascination with zoomorphic shapes, biomorphic forms, vernacular architecture, and local landscapes. Each form strikes up a dialogue between natural and man-made materials that are organic, minimalistic and invite tactile curiosity.
Most recently Tshikare produced a solo exhibition for Everard Read, Cape Town, entitled Pula e ya na (2024). Further solo exhibitions include Setlhare at Everard Read, Johannesburg (2023); Peo e Atang, at 196 Victoria in Cape Town (2021); Oa Mpona at the Woodstock Foundry, Cape Town (2017); and Not by a witch at World Art in Cape Town (2014).
Selected group exhibition include: iSenzo Sak’dala, curated by Lebo Kekana at RESERVOIR in Cape Town (2024); What I Feel When I Think About The Cosmos, Everard Read in Franschhoek, South Africa (2023), The Object, a group show curated by Sean O’Toole at Under Projects, Cape Town (2023); Promenade pour un Objet d’Exception in Paris (2022). In 2021 Tshikare was one of 17 selected artists to contribute to the Dior Medallion Chair exhibition that showcased at Superblue in Miami, USA, at Salone Del Mobile in Milan, Italy, and at Art ‘n Dior in Shanghai, China. Also in 2021 Tshikare formed part of Before yesterday we could fly at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, USA. Further group shows include Inside Out at Kin And Company, New York (2020); Closer Still at Southern Guild, Cape Town (2020); Still Here Tomorrow at Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town (2019); and AfroVibes at Fierce POP, Amsterdam (2018).
Atang Tshikare, born 1980, South Africa
Atang Tshikare is a Cape Town-based, self-taught multidisciplinary artist. Born in Bloemfontein in 1980, Atang was influenced from a young age by the visual storytelling and graphic style of his father, an anti-Apartheid activist and illustrator for various pan-African publications and art magazines. Drawing on a deep connection to his own Tswana heritage and other Southern African cultures, Tshikare’s experimental approach to creating work includes various mediums, such as bronze, ceramics, glass, stone, and wood. His work takes inspiration from his fascination with zoomorphic shapes, biomorphic forms, vernacular architecture, and local landscapes. Each form strikes up a dialogue between natural and man-made materials that are organic, minimalistic and invite tactile curiosity.
Most recently Tshikare produced a solo exhibition for Everard Read, Cape Town, entitled Pula e ya na (2024). Further solo exhibitions include Setlhare at Everard Read, Johannesburg (2023); Peo e Atang, at 196 Victoria in Cape Town (2021); Oa Mpona at the Woodstock Foundry, Cape Town (2017); and Not by a witch at World Art in Cape Town (2014).
Selected group exhibition include: iSenzo Sak’dala, curated by Lebo Kekana at RESERVOIR in Cape Town (2024); What I Feel When I Think About The Cosmos, Everard Read in Franschhoek, South Africa (2023), The Object, a group show curated by Sean O’Toole at Under Projects, Cape Town (2023); Promenade pour un Objet d’Exception in Paris (2022). In 2021 Tshikare was one of 17 selected artists to contribute to the Dior Medallion Chair exhibition that showcased at Superblue in Miami, USA, at Salone Del Mobile in Milan, Italy, and at Art ‘n Dior in Shanghai, China. Also in 2021 Tshikare formed part of Before yesterday we could fly at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, USA. Further group shows include Inside Out at Kin And Company, New York (2020); Closer Still at Southern Guild, Cape Town (2020); Still Here Tomorrow at Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town (2019); and AfroVibes at Fierce POP, Amsterdam (2018).
Atang Tshikare, born 1980, South Africa
Atang Tshikare is a Cape Town-based, self-taught multidisciplinary artist. Born in Bloemfontein in 1980, Atang was influenced from a young age by the visual storytelling and graphic style of his father, an anti-Apartheid activist and illustrator for various pan-African publications and art magazines. Drawing on a deep connection to his own Tswana heritage and other Southern African cultures, Tshikare’s experimental approach to creating work includes various mediums, such as bronze, ceramics, glass, stone, and wood. His work takes inspiration from his fascination with zoomorphic shapes, biomorphic forms, vernacular architecture, and local landscapes. Each form strikes up a dialogue between natural and man-made materials that are organic, minimalistic and invite tactile curiosity.
Most recently Tshikare produced a solo exhibition for Everard Read, Cape Town, entitled Pula e ya na (2024). Further solo exhibitions include Setlhare at Everard Read, Johannesburg (2023); Peo e Atang, at 196 Victoria in Cape Town (2021); Oa Mpona at the Woodstock Foundry, Cape Town (2017); and Not by a witch at World Art in Cape Town (2014).
Selected group exhibition include: iSenzo Sak’dala, curated by Lebo Kekana at RESERVOIR in Cape Town (2024); What I Feel When I Think About The Cosmos, Everard Read in Franschhoek, South Africa (2023), The Object, a group show curated by Sean O’Toole at Under Projects, Cape Town (2023); Promenade pour un Objet d’Exception in Paris (2022). In 2021 Tshikare was one of 17 selected artists to contribute to the Dior Medallion Chair exhibition that showcased at Superblue in Miami, USA, at Salone Del Mobile in Milan, Italy, and at Art ‘n Dior in Shanghai, China. Also in 2021 Tshikare formed part of Before yesterday we could fly at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, USA. Further group shows include Inside Out at Kin And Company, New York (2020); Closer Still at Southern Guild, Cape Town (2020); Still Here Tomorrow at Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town (2019); and AfroVibes at Fierce POP, Amsterdam (2018).
Anna van der Ploeg | born 1992, South Africa
Working at the intersection of painting and printmaking, Anna Van Der Ploeg exhibits large-scale woodblocks as sculptural artworks. With research interests including linguistic determinism and embodied speech, she regularly borrows phrases from literary sources as titles, which more often precede the artworks to which they belong. Van Der Ploeg draws further inspiration from an assortment of homemade posters collected in various urban settings, similarly transforming familiar materials into idiosyncratic mediums. Wine dark seas; blue for Homer (2024), the title taken from a common description of The Iliad, comprises curved plywood carved and stained with ink to mimic the undulation of a ship’s flag. A departure from Van Der Ploeg’s habitual techniques, Anti-role model gone to seed (2024) was produced in collaboration with beaders Vincent Ojeboh and Elizabeth Gwebu. Each artwork, informed by Van Der Ploeg’s understanding of art as a connecting force, extends an opportunity for quiet solidarity.
Anna van der Ploeg was born in 1992, South Africa. In 2022 she completed a Master of Fine Arts at the KASK Royal Academy School of Arts in Gent, Belgium, and currently lives and works in Brussles, Belgium. Van der Ploeg works across the mediums of painting, sculpture, and printmaking.
Most recently, Van der Ploeg and RESERVOIR presented a solo booth at the 40th edition of Art Brussels in Belgium (2024), and prior to this presented her solo exhibition titled Shorter this time, at RESERVOIR in Cape Town (2024). In 2023 van der Ploeg was the artist-in-residence at M Leuven, in Leuven, Belgium, which culminated in the opening of her solo exhibition, Let there be no fuss. Further solo exhibitions include: Fourteen envelopes addressed to Lucienne, at Otomys Gallery in Melbourne, Australia (2023); Omens in hot bacon contradiction, exhibited at David Krut Gallery in New York, and in Johannesburg, South Africa (both 2023); Orators and Gale force scheduled for day off, both at the MAP KASK Royal Academy in Gent in 2022 and 2021. Van der Ploeg was a finalist for the Artsthread Global Design Graduate Show in collaboration with GUCCI, and the recipient of the KASK Royal Academy Legaat de Leu Prize for Fine Arts, both in 2022.
Anna van der Ploeg | born 1992, South Africa
Working at the intersection of painting and printmaking, Anna Van Der Ploeg exhibits large-scale woodblocks as sculptural artworks. With research interests including linguistic determinism and embodied speech, she regularly borrows phrases from literary sources as titles, which more often precede the artworks to which they belong. Van Der Ploeg draws further inspiration from an assortment of homemade posters collected in various urban settings, similarly transforming familiar materials into idiosyncratic mediums. Wine dark seas; blue for Homer (2024), the title taken from a common description of The Iliad, comprises curved plywood carved and stained with ink to mimic the undulation of a ship’s flag. A departure from Van Der Ploeg’s habitual techniques, Anti-role model gone to seed (2024) was produced in collaboration with beaders Vincent Ojeboh and Elizabeth Gwebu. Each artwork, informed by Van Der Ploeg’s understanding of art as a connecting force, extends an opportunity for quiet solidarity.
Anna van der Ploeg was born in 1992, South Africa. In 2022 she completed a Master of Fine Arts at the KASK Royal Academy School of Arts in Gent, Belgium, and currently lives and works in Brussles, Belgium. Van der Ploeg works across the mediums of painting, sculpture, and printmaking.
Most recently, Van der Ploeg and RESERVOIR presented a solo booth at the 40th edition of Art Brussels in Belgium (2024), and prior to this presented her solo exhibition titled Shorter this time, at RESERVOIR in Cape Town (2024). In 2023 van der Ploeg was the artist-in-residence at M Leuven, in Leuven, Belgium, which culminated in the opening of her solo exhibition, Let there be no fuss. Further solo exhibitions include: Fourteen envelopes addressed to Lucienne, at Otomys Gallery in Melbourne, Australia (2023); Omens in hot bacon contradiction, exhibited at David Krut Gallery in New York, and in Johannesburg, South Africa (both 2023); Orators and Gale force scheduled for day off, both at the MAP KASK Royal Academy in Gent in 2022 and 2021. Van der Ploeg was a finalist for the Artsthread Global Design Graduate Show in collaboration with GUCCI, and the recipient of the KASK Royal Academy Legaat de Leu Prize for Fine Arts, both in 2022.
Pierre Vermeulen | born 1992, South Africa
Concerned with a conscious awareness of the body’s temporal encounters, Pierre Vermeulen considers his artistic practice an embodiment of meditative ritual. With sweat collected from his brow as a corrosive agent, Vermeulen oxidises surfaces of gold leaf imitate. Oftentimes, sweat is applied to the surface using an orchid, a symbol of productive desire, woven from human hair. The alchemic process, should Vermeulen’s sweat not burn through the imitate to reveal the paint beneath, renders an imprint of the artist’s body and its intervention. In This is him (2024) and Hylton (2024), the artist incorporates Tama, the embossed votives of the Greek Orthodox Church. Affixing eyes, arms, and torsos to the canvas, Vermeulen inscribes the body as a sacred symbol.
Pierre Vermeulen was born in 1992 in Stellenbosch, South Africa, and currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. He obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2015 and a Masters in Visual Arts in 2021 from the University of Stellenbosch. Pierre Vermeulen’s practice is rooted in the embodied rituals of meditation. His works are characterised by his use of imitation gold leaf on Belgian linen and sweat for its corrosive relationship – using orchids woven from human hair, Vermeulen has developed a technique to create oxidised imprints on the surface of the gold leaf. The unconventional materials used by Vermeulen challenges the boundaries between painting, installation and alchemy, inviting us to reconsider our relationship with these mediums.
In 2023, Vermeulen presented Formats for Transition, a solo exhibition with RESERVOIR in Cape Town. Further solo exhibitions include Thoughts Think Themselves, as part of his Masters presentation in Stellenbosch, South Africa in 2021; Of itself, at SMAC Gallery in Johannesburg (2018); Pierre Vermeulen, at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town; and Sweat Prints, a site-specific installation at the Association for the Visual Arts (AVA) Gallery, both in 2017.
Selected group exhibitions include Of their time (7), A look at private collections at the museum Frac Grand Large, Dunkerque, France (2023); Oh So Quiet at Whatiftheworld Gallery in Cape Town (2023); Matereality, a group exhibition at the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town (2020) and A Show of Solidarity at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town (2020); Forward! Forward? Forward..., at the Stellenbosch University Museum in Stellenbosch (2019); Folly at SMITH in Cape Town (2017); and Restore at the Gallery University Stellenbosch (GUS) in Stellenbosch (2016).
In 2024, RESERVOIR presented a solo booth of works by Vermeulen at SPARK Art Fair in Vienna, Austria, and in 2018, Vermeulen presented a solo booth at Artissima in Turin, Italy. His works have been included in group presentations at various editions of Artissima, Art Brussels, Miart, Art Cologne, Art Abu Dhabi, Contemporary Istanbul, FNB Art Joburg and the Investec Cape Town Art Fair (both in South Africa).
Vermeulen’s work was recently selected for the prestigious Pinakothek der Moderne PIN. Benefit Auction.
Pierre Vermeulen | born 1992, South Africa
Concerned with a conscious awareness of the body’s temporal encounters, Pierre Vermeulen considers his artistic practice an embodiment of meditative ritual. With sweat collected from his brow as a corrosive agent, Vermeulen oxidises surfaces of gold leaf imitate. Oftentimes, sweat is applied to the surface using an orchid, a symbol of productive desire, woven from human hair. The alchemic process, should Vermeulen’s sweat not burn through the imitate to reveal the paint beneath, renders an imprint of the artist’s body and its intervention. In This is him (2024) and Hylton (2024), the artist incorporates Tama, the embossed votives of the Greek Orthodox Church. Affixing eyes, arms, and torsos to the canvas, Vermeulen inscribes the body as a sacred symbol.
Pierre Vermeulen was born in 1992 in Stellenbosch, South Africa, and currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. He obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2015 and a Masters in Visual Arts in 2021 from the University of Stellenbosch. Pierre Vermeulen’s practice is rooted in the embodied rituals of meditation. His works are characterised by his use of imitation gold leaf on Belgian linen and sweat for its corrosive relationship – using orchids woven from human hair, Vermeulen has developed a technique to create oxidised imprints on the surface of the gold leaf. The unconventional materials used by Vermeulen challenges the boundaries between painting, installation and alchemy, inviting us to reconsider our relationship with these mediums.
In 2023, Vermeulen presented Formats for Transition, a solo exhibition with RESERVOIR in Cape Town. Further solo exhibitions include Thoughts Think Themselves, as part of his Masters presentation in Stellenbosch, South Africa in 2021; Of itself, at SMAC Gallery in Johannesburg (2018); Pierre Vermeulen, at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town; and Sweat Prints, a site-specific installation at the Association for the Visual Arts (AVA) Gallery, both in 2017.
Selected group exhibitions include Of their time (7), A look at private collections at the museum Frac Grand Large, Dunkerque, France (2023); Oh So Quiet at Whatiftheworld Gallery in Cape Town (2023); Matereality, a group exhibition at the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town (2020) and A Show of Solidarity at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town (2020); Forward! Forward? Forward..., at the Stellenbosch University Museum in Stellenbosch (2019); Folly at SMITH in Cape Town (2017); and Restore at the Gallery University Stellenbosch (GUS) in Stellenbosch (2016).
In 2024, RESERVOIR presented a solo booth of works by Vermeulen at SPARK Art Fair in Vienna, Austria, and in 2018, Vermeulen presented a solo booth at Artissima in Turin, Italy. His works have been included in group presentations at various editions of Artissima, Art Brussels, Miart, Art Cologne, Art Abu Dhabi, Contemporary Istanbul, FNB Art Joburg and the Investec Cape Town Art Fair (both in South Africa).
Vermeulen’s work was recently selected for the prestigious Pinakothek der Moderne PIN. Benefit Auction.
Ben Stanwix and Xhanti Zwelendaba | South Africa
Xhanti Zwelendaba and Benjamin Stanwix are both multidisciplinary artists who attended the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Art together in the mid-2010s. They have collaborated on various bodies of work centred on their own experiences with and understanding of the legacies of colonialism and apartheid. In this new series of works, the artists have drawn from a collection of found postage stamps from the UCT archives, looking critically at the imagery present in these representations of South Africa in the 1970’s and 80’s (particularly the ‘homeland’ territories) and highlighting their discord by juxtaposing and digitally collaging the compositions. The results become highly charged commentaries on identity and meaning-making within the socio-political history of South Africa.
Zwelendaba, who was born in 1992 in Alice, South Africa, works in various art forms such as sculpting, printmaking, installation, performance art, and video art. Following his studies at Michaelis, Zwelendaba received an MFA from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2022. In the same year, he held a three-month residency at the Leipzig International Art Programme in Germany. Recent group exhibitions include presentations at the 2023 editions of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair in Cape Town, and RMB Latitudes in Johannesburg; featured as artist of the year at Turbine Art Fair, Johannesburg, in 2021; Tongues at The Gallery in Johannesburg in 2021, AMAQABA vol. 1 a duo exhibition with Inga Somdyala at Eclectica Contemporary in Cape Town in 2018; and Chamber of Mines, a duo exhibition with Rowan Smith at Whatiftheworld in Cape Town in 2016.
Stanwix was born in 1986 in Durban. He works in drawing, printmaking, photography, tapestry, text, and sculpture. He completed a post-graduate Diploma in Fine Art at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2017, after previously reading for an MA in History at Oxford University. Stanwix’s practice spans a variety of media including drawing, printmaking, photography, tapestry, text work and sculpture. He has an interest in questions of how we try to understand the past, and the ways in which competing views of history inform the present. The role of chance, mistakes, and mistranslation feature prominently in his work, often with reference to the internet and the increasing influence of algorithms on daily life. Stanwix has participated in residencies at BoxoPROJECTS in Joshua Tree, California, and at Arteles Creative Center in Finland. The artist lives and works in Cape Town. His most recent solo shows are A Bad Night’s Sleep at 99 Loop in 2022/23, Rehearsal for a Public Address at Knysna Fine Art in 2020, and There Must Be Some Mistake at EBONY/ CURATED in 2019.
Ben Stanwix and Xhanti Zwelendaba | South Africa
Xhanti Zwelendaba and Benjamin Stanwix are both multidisciplinary artists who attended the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Art together in the mid-2010s. They have collaborated on various bodies of work centred on their own experiences with and understanding of the legacies of colonialism and apartheid. In this new series of works, the artists have drawn from a collection of found postage stamps from the UCT archives, looking critically at the imagery present in these representations of South Africa in the 1970’s and 80’s (particularly the ‘homeland’ territories) and highlighting their discord by juxtaposing and digitally collaging the compositions. The results become highly charged commentaries on identity and meaning-making within the socio-political history of South Africa.
Zwelendaba, who was born in 1992 in Alice, South Africa, works in various art forms such as sculpting, printmaking, installation, performance art, and video art. Following his studies at Michaelis, Zwelendaba received an MFA from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2022. In the same year, he held a three-month residency at the Leipzig International Art Programme in Germany. Recent group exhibitions include presentations at the 2023 editions of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair in Cape Town, and RMB Latitudes in Johannesburg; featured as artist of the year at Turbine Art Fair, Johannesburg, in 2021; Tongues at The Gallery in Johannesburg in 2021, AMAQABA vol. 1 a duo exhibition with Inga Somdyala at Eclectica Contemporary in Cape Town in 2018; and Chamber of Mines, a duo exhibition with Rowan Smith at Whatiftheworld in Cape Town in 2016.
Stanwix was born in 1986 in Durban. He works in drawing, printmaking, photography, tapestry, text, and sculpture. He completed a post-graduate Diploma in Fine Art at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2017, after previously reading for an MA in History at Oxford University. Stanwix’s practice spans a variety of media including drawing, printmaking, photography, tapestry, text work and sculpture. He has an interest in questions of how we try to understand the past, and the ways in which competing views of history inform the present. The role of chance, mistakes, and mistranslation feature prominently in his work, often with reference to the internet and the increasing influence of algorithms on daily life. Stanwix has participated in residencies at BoxoPROJECTS in Joshua Tree, California, and at Arteles Creative Center in Finland. The artist lives and works in Cape Town. His most recent solo shows are A Bad Night’s Sleep at 99 Loop in 2022/23, Rehearsal for a Public Address at Knysna Fine Art in 2020, and There Must Be Some Mistake at EBONY/ CURATED in 2019.