BOWALE BRUCE
CATALOGUE 2021
Bowale Bruce Biography Bowale Bruce is a South African-born artist from Pretoria. During school Bowale explored various creative pursuits, such as dance, music, drama, and gumboots dance. His first public outing as an artist was in the form of a mural painted at Pretoria National Zoo (2016). He went on to obtain his National Diploma in Fine Arts from the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) in 2018. During his studies at TUT, Bowale also found time to participate in the Pretoria Art Museum Educational Assistance (EA) development program to become an art tour guide and an art facilitator. In 2018 Bowale was amongst the top five short-listed candidates for the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) scholarship and participated in his first group exhibition at the Pretoria Art Museum. In 2018 he featured in the top 40 and top 100 of the States of The Art (SOTA) and Thami Mnyele Fine Arts Awards competition respectively. In 2019 he was selected for the Artist Career Boot Camp (ACBC) and was mentored by Lesley Cohn from Art Source South Africa. This program was funded by the National Arts Council of South Africa (NAC) in association with the Bag Factory Artists ’Studios, where the program took. In 2020 Bowale had his first duo exhibition at the Association for Visual Art (AVA) Gallery in Cape Town. He then later took part in a group exhibition at the Zeitz Museum Of Contemporary African Art, Zeitz MOCCA in Waterfront Silo, Cape Town.
Artist Statement The main thread that runs through my creative process is the idea of nostalgia. I am interested in nostalgia as a trigger of childhood memories. My work is rooted in an ongoing research that focuses on how childhood is situated in today’s social environment, the changes in our school education system and the linguistic changes that have taken place in how people communicate with one another today.
I work primarily in the collage technique to producing my work. My collages combine painted and drawn images with texts from old Sepedi novels, poetry and books of “Dika le Diema” (proverbs and idioms) combined with English text novels and poetry. In the production process of my work, the use of language and text serve as a personal self-reflection for the integration of literature within visual art production and the appreciation of both the text and the visual object as forms of communication. This creates multi-lingual conceptions and limitless artistic possibilities. Thus, my work reflect visual art practice processes and story-telling.
Bowale Bruce. Happiness. 2020. Ink, watercolor, soft pastel and found text on paper. (71 x 99 cm) R 11 000
Bowale Bruce. The alternative form. 2020. Ink, watercolor, and found text on paper. (80 x 80 cm) R 9 500
Bowale Bruce. Indigo child. 2020. Ink, watercolor and found text on paper. (69 x 72 cm) R 10 000
Bowale Bruce. Companion. 2020. Ink, watercolor and found text on paper. 72 X 103 cm. (R 10 000 – 12 000)
Bowale Bruce. The boy with the cart. 2020. Ink, watercolor and found text on paper. (72 x 97 cm) (R 10 000 - 12 000)
Bowale Bruce. Our tongue twisted and faded away. 2019. Oil crayon and found text on paper. (39 x 54 cm). R 5 000.00
Podcast Interview Links: 2021: Pretoria (Tshwane) Pretoria Art Museum Interview: https://mmutleak.com/2021/04/09/intraparadox-interview-with-bruce-bowale/ 2020: Cape Town, Association of Visual Arts (AVA) Gallery: Apple Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast/lounge/id1547404036?i=100050437743
CONTACT
Call: (+27) 82 565 2306 Email address bruce.bowale@gmail.com
Social Media Platforms
Instagram: bruce.bowale Facebook: Bruce Bowale (theboy)
THANK YOU