A Good Time Exhibition Catalogue

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Aspire Art is proud to host A Good Time – a group exhibition curated by Michaela Limberis.

As a dynamic and leading auction house regarded for our fresh and innovative approach in the art industry, we have pioneered new market segments and areas of collecting. Since inception, we have achieved great success with contemporary art at auction and it is against this backdrop that we present our first curated contemporary exhibition in Cape Town.

Limberis has engaged with the artists on this show over the past decade and she offers a thoughtful collection showcasing the artists at different points in their careers. For Aspire, A Good Time is a wonderful opportunity to showcase young artists outside of the auction arena and, in so doing, expand upon the richness of the art offering we bring to our audience.

Sarah Sinisi Senior Art Specialist, Aspire Art

A GOOD TIME

A Good Time celebrates the early careers of a group of local artists I have worked with repeatedly over the past decade. The exhibition is a conversation of current, formative, and exploratory works, reflecting parallel and intersecting journeys over time. This assembly of works questions the methods by which value is commonly determined and what factors may come to constitute a ‘good time’ in an artist’s career.

The title also draws attention to the social element often essential to exhibitions and engagements with art, particularly following the pandemic-induced dominance of virtual experiences.

Featured artists: Rory Emmett, Alice Gauntlett, Bonolo Kavula, Sepideh Mehraban, Heinrich Minnie, Lena Dewaegenaere, Siwa Mgoboza, Nobukho Nqaba, Gaelen Pinnock, Jake Singer, Sitaara Stodel.

Michaela Limberis

RORY EMMETT

Rory Emmett was born in 1992 and lives and works in Cape Town. He completed his BAFA at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town (2014), where he majored in painting and won the Judy Steinberg Painting Prize in his final year. He was a Sasol New Signatures merit award winner (2015). His work is a part of the University of Cape Town’s permanent collection at the Centre for Curating the Archive (CAA) and can be found in a number of private and corporate collections. He completed his PGCE in art and design didactics at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (2017). Emmett has taught art at secondary and tertiary levels and in primary school art workshops at Greatmore Studios, where he was a resident artist from 2017 - 2020. At present, he is an MFA candidate at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town.

Emmett makes use of abstract and figurative painterly and performative devices to explore notions of labour, identity formation and intermingling knowledge systems. The alchemical qualities of paint(ing) inform how he deals with colour and its various ideological and material implications, as a fluid pigmented medium and as inherited racial nomenclature. His projects reference personal and political discourses and historical narratives. These visual and conceptual enquiries take the form of multimedia installations that draw on archival and contemporary imagery and symbolism, often holding a sense of cultural familiarity in attempts to highlight and complicate that which is unconsciously normalised.

Solo exhibitions include HEWN, 99 Loop Gallery, Cape Town (2021), Reprise, SMAC Gallery, Stellenbosch (2019), Concerning Alchemy, AVA Gallery, Cape Town. Selected group exhibitions include RENAISSANCE

| THE CONTEMPORARY EXPRESSION OF THE ANCESTRAL SPIRIT, Tinney Contemporary, Nashville, Tennessee (2021), Emerging Painting Invitational (EPI), First Floor Gallery, Harare (2019), The Main Complaint, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town (2018), EMERGING PAINTERS: The Graduate Show, Turbine Hall, Johannesburg (2015).

Rory Emmett is represented by 99 Loop Gallery.

Collaborations with Michaela Limberis

The Main Complaint, Zeitz MOCAA (2018) Cape Town

C l o s e r than ever, Gallery MOMO garage (2017) Cape Town

Closer than ever, again, digital reconnect, (2020) Online

Mechanisms of Memory, Joburg Fringe (2016) Johannesburg

Survey: Selected works (studio show) (2016) Cape Town

ON SITE, 91 Loop street (2015) Cape Town

Featured on Art Meets TV

Photo by Ulriche Janjtjies

Exhibited : Eclectica Contemporary, Cape Town, KWAAI, 6 December 2018.; Gallery

MOMO, Cape Town, Cape to Tehran: Re-imaging and Re-imagining Personal History in Post-Apartheid South Africa and Post-Revolutionary Iran, 13 February to 29 March

2018.; Investec Cape Town Art Fair, Cape Town International Convention Centre, Cape Town, AVA Gallery (Booth B5), 16 February to 18 February 2018.; AVA Gallery Cape Town, Concerning Alchemy, 17 August to 23 September 2017.

ZAR 18,000 (incl. VAT)

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Exhibited : Eclectica Contemporary, Cape Town, KWAAI, 6 December 2018.; Gallery

MOMO, Cape Town, Cape to Tehran: Re-imaging and Re-imagining Personal History in Post-Apartheid South Africa and Post-Revolutionary Iran, 13 February to 29 March

2018.; Investec Cape Town Art Fair, Cape Town International Convention Centre, Cape Town, AVA Gallery (Booth B5), 16 February to 18 February 2018.; AVA Gallery Cape Town, Concerning Alchemy, 17 August to 23 September 2017.

ZAR 18,000 (incl. VAT)

Rory Emmett (South Africa 1992-), Couple with Child (from the Coloured Photo Album Series), 2017 oil on paper, 17 x 11 cm

Rory Emmett (South Africa 1992-), First Sons (from the Coloured Photo Album Series), 2017 oil on paper, 18 x 12 cm

ZAR

ZAR

Rory Emmett (South Africa 1992-), Sunday Best (from the Coloured Photo Album Series), 2017, oil on paper, 11 x 17 cm

: Eclectica Contemporary, Cape Town, KWAAI, 6 December

Gallery MOMO, Cape Town, Cape to Tehran: Re-imaging and Re-imagining Personal History in Post-Apartheid South Africa and Post-Revolutionary Iran, 13 February to

March

Investec Cape Town Art Fair, Cape Town International Convention Centre, Cape Town, AVA Gallery (Booth B5),

February

Gallery Cape Town, Concerning Alchemy, 17 August to 23 September

Rory Emmett (South Africa 1992-), Karretjie II (from the Coloured Photo Album Series), 2017, oil on paper,

x

Tehran:

Town

Fair,

Town

Centre,

Town,

ALICE GAUNTLETT

Alice Gauntlett was born in 1988 in Cape Town, South Africa. She obtained a BA(FA) from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town (2010), majoring in Photography. She went on to obtain a PGCE Diploma (2011) and MFA (2014) from the University of Cape Town, where she is currently a PhD Candidate. Her thesis is concerned with the representation of Africa and Africans in the interplay between image and text in Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books. She argues that the cartographic imagination as fairy tale provides new tools to unpack these representations.

Gauntlett works with photographic collages. This is an ongoing process wherein she attempts to explore the physicality of photographs and the materiality of the stockings, bandages, glue and micropore through her working of them. The photographs are continually remediated through a process of tearing them up, cutting them and covering them with glue, masking tape, packaging tape, thread, micropore, stockings and Sellotape. The processes of collage provide an appropriate method for exploring and combining photography with domestic materials that reference fixing and binding. Through collage Gauntlett asserts the physicality of her photographs; by fragmenting and then combining them into new forms. In 2011, Gauntlett was a Merit Award Winner at the Absa L’Atelier and in 2010 she was placed in the Top One Hundred at the Absa L’Atelier. Her work is included in the University of Cape Town’s Collection.

She has exhibited on several group shows including Post-Colonial Africa , KKNK, ABSA Gallery, Cape Town (2014), Cape Town Art Fair (2014), GRID Photo Biennial, Castle of Good Hope, Cape Town (2014), Mechanisms of Memory, Art Meets Camera , Joburg Fringe, Johannesburg (2015), Closer than Ever, Art Meets Camera , Gallery MOMO, Cape Town (2017), Group Show, Mullers Gallery, Cape Town (2018).

Collaborations with Michaela Limberis

C l o s e r than ever, Gallery MOMO garage (2017) Cape Town

ON SITE, 91 Loop street (2015) Cape Town

Art Meets Alice Gauntlett, Art Meets (2015) Cape Town

Featured on Art Meets TV

Alice

Alice

Alice Gauntlett (South

Meets, Cape Town, Art Meets

Alice

Alice Gauntlett (South Africa 1988-), The Garden Wall, 2022, found photographs, canvases, glue, stockings, micropore, plaster of Paris and coffee, 86 x 64 x 5 cm ZAR 15,000 (incl. VAT)

BONOLO KAVULA

Bonolo Kavula was born in 1992 in Kimberley, South Africa, and currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. She obtained a BA(FA) from the Michaelis School of Fine Art (University of Cape Town) in 2014, majoring in Printmaking. Kavula received the 2014 Katrine Harries Print Cabinet Award at the University of Cape Town and she was a founding member of the Cape Town based artist collective, Iqhiya. In 2021 she was short-listed for the Norval Sovereign African Art Prize.

In 2021, Kavula presented a solo booth at Art Basel Miami Beach, titled a re kopane ko thabeng. She presented her first solo exhibition, sewedi sewedi, at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town, also in 2021. Other recent projects include a solo booth at the 2020 Investec Cape Town Art Fair, as part of the curated section, TOMORROWS/TODAY, a performance at A4 Arts Foundation in Cape Town, in 2019; and Twenty Sexy, a performance at blank projects gallery in Cape Town.

Selected group exhibitions include: Speculative Enquiry #1: On Abstraction, Michaelis Galleries, Cape Town (2019), The Main Complaint, curated by Michaela Limberis, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA), Cape Town (2018) and Shady Tactics, curated by Thuli Gamedze, SMAC Gallery, Cape Town (2018), Atomic Peace, Bag Factory, Johannesburg (2017), iQhiya Group Exhibition, The Association for Visual Arts (AVA) Gallery, Cape Town (2016) and New Monuments, Commune1, Cape Town (2016). Her works are included in collections such as the Works of Art Committee collection (UCT) and the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town.

Bonolo Kavula is represented by SMAC Gallery.

Collaborations with Michaela Limberis

The Main Complaint, Zeitz MOCAA (2018) Cape Town

Mechanisms of Memory, Joburg Fringe (2016) Johannesburg

ON SITE, 91 Loop Street (2015) Cape Town

A Space For…, Upstairs on Bree (2016) Cape Town

Featured on Art Meets TV

Bonolo Kavula

linocut,

SEPIDEH MEHRABAN

Sepideh Mehraban was born in 1986 in Tehran, Iran. She currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. She obtained a BAFA from the University of Alzahra in Tehran, Iran (2009) where she also obtained her MAFA (2011). She furthered her studies by obtaining a postgraduate diploma in Fine Arts (2012) followed by a second Masters in Visual Arts degree from Michaelis School of Fine Arts in Cape Town, South Africa. Mehraban recently completed her thesis and a solo exhibition titled THIS IS NOT PROPAGANDA for which she was awarded a doctorate of Philosophy in Visual Arts from the University of Stellenbosch. In 2018, she curated a group exhibition titled Cape to Tehran: Re-imaging and re-imagining personal history in post-Apartheid South Africa and post-revolutionary Iran, at Gallery MOMO in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa.

Solo exhibitions include THIS IS NOT PROPAGANDA , SMAC Gallery, Stellenbosch (2021), Until The Lions Have Their Own Historians, The History Of The Hunt Will Always Glorify The Hunter, SMITH Studio, Cape Town (2019), and Retracing Memories, Golestan Gallery, Tehran (2015). She has participated in numerous group exhibitions including Space and Place, Galerie EIGEN + Art in Leipzig (2021), Surroundings, Suburbia Contemporary Gallery, Florence (2020), 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London (2019), The Female Line, SMAC Gallery, Cape Town (2019), The Main Complaint, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town (2018), Encounters, SMITH Studio, Cape Town (2018), A Painting Today, Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town (2017) and Charting, curated by Andrew Lamprecht, Eclectica Contemporary Gallery, Cape Town, 2016.

Mehraban’s work forms part of public and private collections such as Alzahra University in Tehran, Iran; University of Cape Town; Spier Arts Trust; Thulamela Chambers, Johannesburg; Norval Foundation; A4 Arts Foundation; Luciano Benetton Collection, Italy.

Collaborations with Michaela Limberis

The Main Complaint, Zeitz MOCAA (2018) Cape Town

Mechanisms of Memory, Joburg Fringe (2016) Johannesburg

C l o s e r than ever, Gallery MOMO garage (2017) Cape Town

Closer than ever, again, digital reconnect, (2020) Online

Featured on Art Meets TV

Sepideh

SIWA MGOBOZA

Siwa Mgoboza was born in 1993 and is a polymath visual artist extraordinaire, a cultural curator-at-large and the founder of SIYABANGENA!. They graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Art (UCT) with a distinction, Dean’s list and The Cecil Skotnes Award (2015). They are currently at the University of Witwatersrand pursuing an MA in Fine Art with a PMA (Post Merit Award).

They were the first and youngest Black Queer artist to be the featured artist for Italy’s oldest photography fair, MIA Art Fair, in Milan (2018). They have worked and performed for Athi Patra-Ruga and Nicholas Hlobo. They were awarded the Under 35 Photography Prize 2018 - ARTVERONA Art Fair, Italy, BNL Paribas Photography Award (2018), Italy, Young + African Visual Artist of The Year (2015) and Nestling Awards, SA. Mgoboza is part of the inaugural BASA (Business of Arts South Africa) Cultural Producer Programme in association with the British Council, Common Purpose and the Manchester International Festival.

Their work is in public and private collections including Carnegie Museum of Fine Art (USA), The National Gallery of Ottawa (Canada), University of Cape Town (South Africa), University of Witwatersrand (WAM – WITS ARTS MUSUEM, South Africa), Leridon Collection (France & Africa), The University of South Africa Permanent Art Collection and BONHÔTE Foundation for Contemporary Art (Switzerland).

Recent shows include: FIGURE/GROUND: POSING FOR THE CAMERA , Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg, USA (2021), AVA 50 Year Anniversary - Association for Visual Artists (AVA), Cape Town, Matereality, Iziko National Gallery, Cape Town (2020) and Àbadakone | Continuous Fire | Feu continuel, National Gallery of Canada (2020). Mgoboza is represented in Toronto, Canada by Matter Gallery, Galleria Gaburro in Milan and Verona, Italy and Semaphore Gallery in Neuchatel, Switzerland. They curated the Turbine Art Fair Grad Show with Michaela Limberis, WITS Centenary Exhibition and the Smithsonian Museum of African Art cultural festival (2022).

Collaborations with Michaela Limberis AKAA (2016) Paris Featured on Art Meets TV

Photo by Sipho Nkosi

Siwa Mgoboza (South Africa

The Misplaced Letter I, Europe,

acrylic, wax, wax crayon, pencil and masking tape

panel,

Siwa Mgoboza (South Africa 1993-), The Misplaced Letter III, Africa, 2013, acrylic, wax, wax crayon, pencil and masking tape on panel,

Siwa

HEINRICH MINNIE & LENA DEWAEGENAERE

Heinrich Minnie was born in Middelburg, Mpumalanga in 1991. He currently lives and works in Cape Town. He completed a BA in Fine Art (2014) majoring in Sculpture and went on to do his MFA (2020) at the University of Cape Town. Notable galleries and institutions Minnie has exhibited with include Brundyn+, AVA Gallery, Zeitz MOCAA and Stevenson. His practice involves exploring the topics of urbanisation and digitisation through video and installation.

Group exhibitions include: Premise, The Box, Cape Town (2021), The Nonrepresentational, Stevenson, Johannesburg & Cape Town (2020), PENUMBRA, Old Granary, Desmond and Leah Tutu Foundation, Cape Town (2019), The Main Complaint, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town (2018), C l o s e r than ever, Art Meets Camera, Cape Town (2017), SERIES/FRIENDS 3:3, World Art Gallery, Cape Town (2016), Mechanisms of Memory, Art Meets Camera at Joburg Fringe, Johannesburg (2016), ON SITE, Art Meets Camera, Cape Town (2015) and Suspension of Disbelief, Brundyn+, Cape Town (2015).

Lena Dewaegenaere is a Brussels based artist born in 1989. She completed her Master of Arts in audio-visual arts, RITCS Brussels (2011), Part-time art education higher-degree in painting, Sint-Lukas Academy Brussels, BE (2017) and BE Postgraduate diploma in Fine Art: Painting, at the Michaelis School of Fine Art (2018). She has always been interested in the power of images and visual language and is primarily active as a painter and documentary filmmaker. Her paintings are influenced by the visual language of film and vice versa. Visual language is a more direct and instinctive way to communicate and to transfer a message. The main thematic interest in her practice is people and how they relate to a certain place and moment in time. She is exploring real space and time versus mental space and time. Her work speaks about ways of seeing and interpretation.

Collaborations with Michaela Limberis

The Main Complaint, Zeitz MOCAA (2018) Cape Town

C l o s e r than ever, Gallery MOMO garage (2017) Cape Town

ON SITE, 91 Loop street (2015) Cape Town

Mechanisms of Memory, Joburg Fringe (2016) Johannesburg

Featured on Art Meets TV

Heinrich Minnie (South Africa 1991-), Homunculus I (Water), 2019-2020, 3840 x 2160 pixels, single-channel video, from an edition of 3 + 2APs, 6 minutes, 41 seconds in duration

Exhibited : Desmond and Leah Tutu Foundation, Cape Town, SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER , August 2021.;Stevenson Gallery, Online, The Nonrepresentational, August to Sep tember 2020.; Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town, MFA exhibition, Homunculi of Digital City, November 2019 to January 2020. ZAR 11,000 (incl. VAT)

Heinrich Minnie (South Africa 1991-), Homunculus II (Air), 2019-2020, 3840 x 2160 pixels, single-channel video, from an edition of 3 + 2APs, 5 minutes, 36 seconds in duration

Exhibited : Desmond and Leah Tutu Foundation, Cape Town, SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER , August 2021.;Stevenson Gallery, Online, The Nonrepresentational, August to Sep tember 2020.; Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town, MFA exhibition, Homunculi of Digital City, November 2019 to January 2020.

(incl. VAT)

Heinrich Minnie (South Africa 1991-), Homunculus III (Fire), 2019-2020, 3840 x 2160 pixels, single-channel video, from an edition of 3 + 2APs, 8 minutes, 16 seconds in duration

Exhibited : Desmond and Leah Tutu Foundation, Cape Town, SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER , August 2021.;Stevenson Gallery, Online, The Nonrepresentational, August to Sep tember 2020.; Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town, MFA exhibition, Homunculi of Digital City, November 2019 to January 2020. ZAR 11,000 (incl. VAT)

Heinrich Minnie (South Africa 1991-), Homunculus IV (Earth), 2019-2020, 3840 x 2160 pixels, single-channel video, from an edition of 3 + 2APs, 5 minutes, 13 seconds in duration

Exhibited : Desmond and Leah Tutu Foundation, Cape Town, SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER , August 2021.;Stevenson Gallery, Online, The Nonrepresentational, August to Sep tember 2020.; Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town, MFA exhibition, Homunculi of Digital City, November 2019 to January 2020.

11,000 (incl. VAT)

Lena Dewaegenaere and Heinrich Minnie (Belgium 1989 –; South Africa 1991 –), Uitsigt, 2021, acrylic on TV monitor with video, 35 x 52 x 8 cm ZAR 19,000 (incl. VAT)

Lena Dewaegenaere and Heinrich Minnie (Belgium 1989 –; South Africa 1991 –), Binnehof, 2021, acrylic on TV monitor with video, 32.5 x 37.5 x 5.5 cm ZAR 18,000 (incl. VAT)

NOBUKHO NQABA

Nobukho Nqaba was born in 1992 in Butterworth located in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. She is a graduate of the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town (UCT) where she majored in photography (2012). In 2012, she was awarded the Tierney Fellowship and was the recipient of reGeneration3, a photography focused initiative by the Musee de l’Elysee. Nqaba holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Education, Visual Art and Theory from UCT (2013) and a Post Graduate Diploma in Library & Information Studies (2019). She has embarked on several teaching endeavours through her role as Visual Art and Digital Photography Educator at the Peter Clarke Art Centre and a Photography Lecturer at the Red & Yellow Creative School of Business in Cape Town.

Nqaba is currently an MFA candidate at the Michaelis School of Fine Art and works as Curator and Education Coordinator at the Irma Stern Museum in Cape Town. Nqaba’s work explores the precariousness of home and opportunity. Using checkered plastic bags commonly known as China bags, plain grey blankets, and worn overalls, she points to the fragility and impermanence of home. Nqaba’s work reflects on personal memories of growing up in an informal settlement in Grabouw, Cape Town and the complexities of migration and labour.

Nqaba has exhibited widely including at the SOLAR Festival, Brazil (2018), FITE Festival of Textiles: Clermont Ferrand, France (2018); Africa Africa, Milan, Italy (2018), GETOXOPHOTO, Spain (2017), China Afrika, Germany (2017), Also Known As Africa: Contemporary Art and Design Fair, France (2016); Making & Unmaking: An exhibition, Camden Art Centre, U.K. (2016), reGeneration3 , UK, USA, Mexico and Switzerland (2015-16), Designing Africa 3.0, Spain (2016), LagosPhoto Festival, Nigeria (2015) and Against Time, Bamako Encounters, Bamako, Mali (2015).

Collaborations with Michaela Limberis

C l o s e r than ever, again digital reconnect (2020) Online

AKAA Art Fair (2016) Paris

OFF THE WALL, interventions at the V&A Waterfront (2015) Cape Town

Featured on Art Meets TV

Nobukho Nqaba (South Africa 1992-), Untitled (Umaskhenkethe Likhaya Lam), 2013, giclée print on Hahnemühle paper, sheet size:

Nobukho

Likhaya

GAELEN PINNOCK

Gaelen Pinnock was born in 1980 and is an architect and artist based in Cape Town, South Africa. He uses various techniques to explore and document expressions of power in the urban landscape. His work scrutinizes the legacies of failed utopian visions and the shadows cast by laws, societal structures and urban development trends.

Pinnock explores the patterns that underlay our cities, obscured by the myopia of day-to-day existence: masked by the glitz of developments and the creep of securitised precincts; ignored by the clustering of suburbs and the ebb and flow of traffic; pushed aside by our own fears and prejudices. Much of his work looks at how modern developments and policies in South Africa are entrenching class separation in an urban landscape that is already shaped by the legacy of colonial rule, apartheid legislation and divisive spatial planning. Pinnock teases out patterns, sensations, feelings of exclusion and distils his findings into stark, geometric works. These snapshots of a city and a society are aesthetically beguiling but loaded with undercurrents of deficiency and violence.

The artist has exhibited widely including; In Security, A4 Arts Foundation, Cape Town (2022), Investec Cape Town Art Fair, 99 Loop Gallery (2022), X Y Z, 99 Loop Gallery, Cape Town (2022), Rapid Response Restitution: LagosPhoto (2022), Il giardino delle sculture volanti, Parete Art Museum (PAM), Parete, Italy (2020), Something to Declare public sculpture shown at LagosPhoto (2019) , The Main Complaint, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town (2018), MIRABILIA, Antilia Gallery, Bitonto, Italy (2018), C l o s e r than Ever, Gallery MOMO, Cape Town (2017), Barclays L’Atelier Top 100 exhibition, Absa Gallery, Johannesburg (2015), Load Shedding, Commune1 Gallery, Cape Town (2015), GRID International Photography Biennial, Cape Town (2015), Makers + Thinkers at the World Design Capital Design Policy Conference, Cape Town (2014), Werdmuller Exhibition, Cape Institute for Architecture (2014).

Collaborations with Michaela Limberis

The Main Complaint, Zeitz MOCAA (2018) Cape Town

C l o s e r than ever, Gallery MOMO garage (2017) Cape Town

ON SITE, 91 Loop street (2015) Cape Town

Culprits of Construction, GRID Photo Biennial (2015) Cape Town

Visionaries, The Rockwell (2014) Cape Town

Featured on Art Meets TV

Gaelen Pinnock (South Africa 1980-), Villa I, 2012, giclée print on 310gsm Hahnemühle etched cotton paper, from an edition of 5 + 2APs, image size:

Gallery,

Town, Dystopias

Gaelen Pinnock (South Africa 1980-), Towers II, 2012, giclée print on 310gsm Hahnemühle etched cotton paper, from an edition of 5 + 2APs, image size:

Gaelen

Bouquet

JAKE SINGER

Jake Michael Singer was born in 1991. He experiments with a broad range of disciplines from photography to works on paper and commands an exquisite mastery of sculpture. Drawing inspiration from the emergent behaviour of flocking birds, where the individual is subsumed in the whole; and meditating on the timeless monumentality of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, his Murmurations series speaks to our time. Meticulously constructed, using up to sixteen thousand meters of marine grade stainless steel for a single sculpture, the Murmurations series establishes his position as one of the leading young sculptors from Africa.

Singer has held solo shows in Africa and America and been part of over 60 group shows since graduating in 2013. He was recognised by the Eduardo Villa Foundation Grant in both 2016 and 2017, the youngest sculptor yet to be awarded this honour. His work features in private collections in South Africa, Germany, Greece, Canada, Turkey, the UK and US.

In 2019 THK Gallery presented Singer’s works at Contemporary Istanbul, AKAA Art Fair in Paris, Cologne Fine Art & Design Fair in Germany, and in the group show, Between the Lines, at THK Gallery. The following year, in 2020, the artist was shown by THK at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair.

Singer has completed residencies in Johannesburg (2014), and Amsterdam (2017). He has three large-scale public sculptures in Johannesburg: Dawn Chorus, part of the RMB Collection in the Think Precinct; Roarke’s Evacuation Plan, a landmark on the Joburg skyline; and Red Murmur, a site-specific installation in the new Radisson Red in Rosebank.

In 2020, Singer launched the Emergence Art Prize with THK Gallery, which was supported by RMB. His work has been exhibited at Zeitz MOCAA, and his large installation And all the Birds Flew with a Harsh Scream (Marmara), featured in Matereality, Iziko Museum, Cape Town (2020), and is currently on exhibition in the sculpture garden of the Norval Foundation in Johannesburg. Most recently, in 2021, Singer completed Bennu Stasis a site-specific installation in a former Hamman in Istanbul dating from 1477.

Jake Singer is represented by THK Gallery.

Collaborations with Michaela Limberis

The Main Complaint, Zeitz MOCAA (2018) Cape Town

Culprits of Construction, GRID Photo Biennial (2015) Cape Town

Visionaries, The Rockwell (2014) Cape Town

Featured on Art Meets TV

Jake Singer (South Africa 1991-), From the Beginning, 2016-19, plastic drop sheet, pins, stainless steel 213 and mild steel, 172 x

cm including base POA

Jake Singer (South Africa 1991-), Bright Lattices of Logic 6, 2017, spray paint, acetone and ink on paper, 20.5 x 15 cm POA

Jake Singer (South Africa 1991-), Pale Stability with Crash, 2017, chromogenic print with margins on matte paper, image size: 83 x 55 cm POA

Jake Singer (South Africa 1991-), Genesis with Reach, 2018, chromogenic print with margins on matte paper, image size: 83 x 55 cm POA

SITAARA STODEL

Sitaara Stodel was born in Cape Town in 1991. She graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Art at The University of Cape Town in 2014 majoring in Photography and lives and works in Cape Town. She currently works in the photographic department as the technical officer of photography at the Michaelis School of Fine Art. She is highly accomplished in analogue photographic methods. This experience has been key in shaping her various approaches to image-making. Her art practice focuses on collage, video, photography and printmaking.

Following her graduation, Stodel was awarded the prestigious Tierney Fellowship, granting her the opportunity for further practice and mentorship. In the years that followed, she has taken part in a number of shows across Cape Town, including at the Zeitz MOCAA, Stevenson, SMAC Gallery, Smith Gallery, Salon 91 and Everard Read and has been ongoingly involved in education. She had a solo booth at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair (2019) and solo exhibition The House in My Head Has Many Stories at Salon 91, Cape Town (2021).

Selected group exhibitions include: Sasol New Signatures Art Competition Top 100, Pretoria Arts Museum, Pretoria (2013), Return to Sender, Centre for African Studies Gallery, Cape Town (2015), Greatest Hits 2014: The Domestic Odyssey, AVA, Cape Town (2015), [in] appropriate, PH Centre, Cape Town (2017), Art Meets Camera: Closer than ever, MOMO, Cape Town (2017), FREESPACE and The Main Complaint, Zeitz MOCAA (2018), Johannesburg Art Fair, Johannesburg (2019), Voices and Choices, Women’s Jail Constitution Hill, Johannesburg (2019), Rendezvous, SMITH, Cape Town (2018), Shady Tactics, SMAC, Cape Town (2018), Borderlines, The Third Dot, Mauritius (2019), Kernel, Group show put together by artists, Cape Town (2020), Apartment Vol.2, The Fourth, Cape Town (2020) and Open House, CIRCA at Everard Read, Cape Town (2021).

Collaborations with Michaela Limberis

The Main Complaint, Zeitz MOCAA (2018) Cape Town

C l o s e r than ever, Gallery MOMO garage (2017) Cape Town

Closer than ever, again, digital reconnect, (2020) Online

Featured on Art Meets TV

Photo by Anna Roux

Sitaara

MICHAELA LIMBERIS (CURATOR)

Michaela Limberis is a curator, filmmaker and founder of Art Meets based in Cape Town and Zagreb.

Michaela obtained a BAFA from the Michaelis School of Fine Art (2012) majoring in Photography and completed a curatorial training programme at the South African Centre for Photography (2013). In 2014, under the ‘Art Meets’ umbrella, she began curating exhibitions and gatherings with recent graduates, many of whom are featured in this exhibition. This work extended into video interviews and documentation for ‘Art Meets TV’.

Michaela curates site-specific exhibitions and interventions and has worked consistently (but not exclusively) with a core group of artists over the past decade. Exhibitions include The Main Complaint at Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town (2018), Penny Siopis: This is a True Story, Six Films, Zeitz MOCAA (2018), C l o s e r than ever, Gallery MOMO garage (2017), AKAA Art Fair, Paris (2016), OFF THE WALL, interventions at the V&A Waterfront (2015) and Culprits of Construction, as guest curator for GRID Photo Biennial at the Castle of Good Hope (2015).

She directed her first documentary film for SMAC on Simon Stone, Imagining Stone followed by Penny Siopis’ Open Form / Open Studio documentary short (with Heinrich Minnie) both of which launched at the Labia Theatre as part of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair’s Art.Doc program (2019).

Photo by Gavin Furlonger