Purgatorium by joh deetlefs

Purgatorium Pauline Gutter

Cover (front & back): Toiling and Moiling 2015, Oil on flax linen, two panels 164 x 210 cm and 164 x 142 cm

Purgatorium Pauline Gutter

Absa Gallery | 6 - 25 September 2015 |

Absa Towers North | 161 Main Street Johannesburg | South Africa

Foreword Absa is honoured to host Purgatorium, Pauline Gutter’s fifth solo exhibition, and first since winning the 2013 Absa L’Atelier Art ompetition. Through its sponsorship of the visual arts, Absa aims to identify, encourage and promote young talent. It is by identifying talent through sponsorships such as the L’Atelier Art Competition and providing artists with a platform through its Gallery that Absa makes visible the development of young and emerging artists, helping them to build their brand and identity within the visual arts. We are proud to host this exhibition of Pauline Gutter; an artist who is both technically proficient and conceptually strong, and who has an incredibly high level of dedication and commitment. Since first entering the L’Atelier competition in 2002 we are proud to see how Pauline’s career has continued to grow and flourish year on year. A special thanks to Professor Dirk van den Berg – Department of History of Art and Image Studies, University of the Free State – for his insight into the exhibition and neatly unpacking it through the essay included herein. We wish Pauline success with this exhibition and look forward to seeing her career continue to develop and grow in the years ahead. Dr Paul Bayliss Absa Art & Museum Curator

Shaven Exhibit 2014, Oil on canvas, 107 x 103 cm

Strait 2015, Oil on canvas, 122 x 92 cm

Succession 2015, Oil on flax linen, 215 x 168 cm

The Hard Way 2015, Charcoal on fabriano, 145 x 90 cm

I see my work projected into the future in the form of impressions of ‘satin black ink’ or shadow traces graced with colours, and it is with a creative approach that I depict the idea of the ‘invisible presence’. Upon my arrival in France I attended the ‘Salon International de l’Agriculture’, an annual agricultural show and trade fair that takes place at the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles in Paris. It is one of the world’s largest and most important agricultural shows, drawing crowds numbering 703,407 in 2014. The series of works entitled ‘Shadow Barrier’ is a reflection of my fascination with the mass display of lifeless livestock, the masses of people being ‘herded’ along, an experiential mixture of threads of the individual vs. the collective; lives floating weightlessly like visible ghosts. At night, my memory revealed through paint markings the form of these people’s faces. Echoes of veneered expressions unveiled through adding and deducing, working ‘into’ the canvas, and a multitudeof portraits surfaced. These crowds appeared as a mixture of threads from the past, influenced by a further past, the studied markings of masters in the museums visited. Similar to the peeling of a façade to give the illusion of disappearance, a livid, yet visible presence arose on the canvas. I completed my residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and started making lithographs at a print studio in the south of France. The limestone used for the Egyptian sarcophagi is described as ‘flesh eating stone’. I inquisitively delved into the geological history of limestone. Interesting results emerged during the sanding process of the thick and thin applications of paint and glazed impastos; consequently the ‘presence’ visible on the canvas would appear more or less vaguely, implying the feeling of absence.

As I returned from France, Volkspele in South Africa turned a hundred years old. Perhaps, tradition dying, being purged from the land and the memory of these people portrayed. Trying to sometimes capture their simple and innocent existence. Singing has always completed Afrikaans Folk Dancing. It is both a static and stature dance, rotating in the circle and personally interprets the ‘played’ specific dance. Some nearly dissolving, ghostlike figures, raising one’s interest to search deeper into the roots of dying traditions. Central to the exhibition is a monumental blown-up nose ring used for weaning calves, which allowed emotional connection, putting them centre stage. Metaphorically, these are processes in the current climate of South Africa – some people want to move away from stigma, others adopt hysteria. The huge forces of masculine and banal images of bulls in uncomfortable positions manifest the voiceless and fading generation of food producers in their daily struggle and evocation of the land. Viewers are both drawn in and estranged by conceptual and formal practices. This is the context in which I invite viewers to discover and face the inevitable passage via Purgatorium.

It Suffices 2014, Oil on canvas, 36 x 38 cm

Purgatorium With Pauline Gutter’s farming background the large sculptural piece, Purgatorium, provides the inaugural assertion of the exhibition’s governing purgatorial theme. This work is a blown-up version of a spiked plastic nose ring that is used for the weaning of calves — an impersonal and unfamiliar alternative to the formerly routine practice in small-scale farming of physically separating calf and dam in different camps. Instead of a cleansing discipline to rid the soul of bodily encumbrances or a spiritual purification of the stains and blemishes of sin, the distress of purgatory in Pauline’s thinking is understood in a full-bodied and earth-bound weaning context. For her such purgatory involves the lived endurance of stress and suffering. The harsh experience of withstanding and coping with anguish and uncertainty may on occasion serve to foster growth towards maturity and self-reliance, advancing from inculcation towards degrees of empowerment and independence. As a weaning process, however, purgatory involves struggle as well as contingency, toil as well as exigency. This kind of weaning does not comprise stepwise nurtured growth in any meritorious or amelioristic sense. In her frame — at a distance seemingly echoing Heraclitan flux — the outcome of such clashes of volatile contraries and opposing forces will always be uncertain and unpredictable. Weaning, in the context of this exhibition, apparently claims the status of an existential root metaphor, reflected perhaps in Pauline’s own trajectory against the odds, from a Free State farming childhood to Paris and beyond.

The paintings and the prints in this exhibition have, in various ways, the effect of disseminating the tenor of the weaning metaphor of struggle for survival into the farming domains of the land, its creatures and its people. This widening gyre of allusive meaning further escalates from such primary domains, local places and personae toward unknown horizons opened up and explored by the shared imagination of prospective spectators. This quickening presentational dynamic from the visible towards the invisible, from figures presented in painted or printed configurations on canvas and paper toward the imaginary presence of fictional worlds, is achieved by means of processes of iconic contraction and augmentation unique to Pauline’s creative work. The exhibition lifts the veil on certain areas of her creative work. It comprises selections from two collections of work — first a number of large scale paintings of cattle, depictions of individual bulls, cows and calves and, secondly, a select group of pictures of human heads, portraits and portrait-like images from a continuing series that she refers to as Shadow-barriers. No landscape paintings are included. Yet one senses the presence of our troubled land, looming in the background as undertone to this artist’s unique Imaginary, even during her stay in France, beyond the borders of her home country. The land is part of the invisible presence of these works.

Purgatorium 2015, Mixed media, 140 cm x 180 cm x 50 cm

The Weaned 2014, Oil on flax linen, 143 x 102 cm

Beast of Burden 2015, Oil on flax linen, 164 x 234 cm

Let us first consider certain strategies of contraction. I would suggest that the artist has managed to condense the land (one is reminded of the Afrikaans ‘verdig’ and ‘digkuns’ for poetry), alternatively to distil the land (‘distil’ also in the purgatorial sense of cleansing and refining) into the massive bodies and animated surfaces of these bull, cow and calf figures. In some of these large-scale paintings of cattle the figures do not appear as completed whole animals, perhaps in order to evoke a sense of intense energy fields and immense bodily presences which like expansive landscapes seem to challenge reduction and domestication by inclusion within restrictive pictorial frames. Even in cases where the whole figure is indeed depicted these animals seem to be responding to forces which exceed the ordinary pull of the earth’s gravity. The actions of these hulking bodies throbbing with vitalistic power present us with near mythical scenes of ungainly bodies, heroic actions and titanic efforts. In 16

their postures of energetic exertion it is often difficult to establish whether the animal is losing its balance or whether it is struggling to regain firm footing. This is clearly evident in a representative example with the telling title, The Hard Way. It is in such cumbersome animal postures that the artist seems concerned with invoking gestural allusions – gesturing understood as a typically human action of bodily expression. This feature becomes very explicit, for instance, in the emphatically self-assured, even assertively proud or heroic, posture of the grown calf looking down at us in the painting with another telling title, The Weaned. Significantly, Pauline accomplished this without in any way striving to caricature, or humanise or even to domesticate the animals. One senses that in her work they retain their primeval unruly wildness and unpredictable violence – enduring qualities resistant to human weaning, taming, cultivation and exploitation.

Family Portrait 2015, Oil on flax linen, 148 x 178 cm

Reflecting on her tell-tale titles — such as The Hard Way and The Weaned — mention should be made of Pauline’s cogitating and ruminating in protracted endeavours to find or to create apposite titles for individual works. The pointedly gnomic titles often take the form of proverbial, enigmatic, satirical or humorous gestures with which the artist in retrospect responds to her own images. In turn these serve us as clues to follow when venturing into the works’ imaginary worlds. It is the figurative potential of the verbal titles which prompts and invites our responses to her images. They operate as directional poetic gestures in concert with the painted or printed images. Together they have the effect of situating prospective spectators immediately in the imaginary world of the images. Human gesture is the explicit theme in two paintings which memorialise the death and burial of the hostage victim, Pierre Korkie — Colateral Damage 2 and Colateral Damage 3 — respectively depicting the Grey College principal and the USA ambassador in South Africa speaking at Korkie’s funeral in Bloemfontein. These striking gestural figures recall Hans-Georg Gadamer’s description of gesture as the essential way in which paintings ‘speak’: What a gesture expresses is ‘there’ in the gesture itself. A gesture is something wholly corporeal and wholy spiritual at one and the same time. The gesture reveals no inner meaning itself. The whole being of the gesture lies in what it says. At the same time every gesture is also opaque in an enigmatic sense. It is a mystery that holds back as much as it reveals. For what the gesture reveals is the being of meaning rather than the knowledge of meaning. 18

The tenor of the gestures depicted in these two paintings may well be summarised as entailing such rudimentary and laconic expressions of power as ‘There you have it’ and ‘Take it or leave it’. But this would clearly be an extremely reductive exercise which strips gesturing of its poetic essence and rhetorical expressiveness. The gestures reveal as much as they conceal, especially since in their painted presentation they have been abstracted from the two speakers’ accompanying voices, movements and utterances, all of which have been reduced to coloured brush marks — their gesturing distilled and transmuted into the coloured bursh marks left by the gestures of artist’s hand. This gestural mixture is presented here as the dominant feature in configurations which also include angle of view, costume, posture and facial expression. The ambassador’s claw-like hand gesture in particular is extremely eloquent, revealing what the rest of his make-up may be concealing. It should be remembered, however, that in the above passage Gadamer is not talking primarily about the painterly or graphic depiction of human gestures. Issuing from his hermeneutic response to the phenomenon of non-figurative or abstract art, his real topic is the gestural or deictic nature of any painted image, i.e. that it visibly and imaginatively shows, presents, enacts what would otherwise remain invisible, unimaginable or unintelligible. Following this approach we are able to intuit the uniqueness of Pauline Gutter’s art, embodied as it were, in her touch and fingerprints, her bodily energy, propriosensory awareness and muscle memory, the attack of her brush strokes and her use of nonsynthetic pigments — in sum all the features associated with the painterly mark.

Collateral Damage II 2015, Oil on canvas, 97 x 68 cm

Collateral Damage III 2015, Oil on canvas, 97 x 68 cm

Collateral Damage I 2015, Oil on canvas, 97 x 68 cm

Entitlement 2014, One colour lithograph, Paper size: 35 x 47.5 cm, Image size: 22.5 x 34.5 cm, Edition: 20, Printed at Atelier le Grand Village

Shadow Barrier 3 2014, Oil on canvas, 27 x 19 cm

Muffled Promise 2015, Oil on flax linen, 164 x 200 cm

Her unique repertoire of painterly marks represents the most elemental constituent of Pauline Gutter’s art, roughly comparable to a composer’s tonal rows or the ductus of a writer’s script. Numerous terms have been used to describe the distinct yet diffuse and inchoate marks of colour placed and amalgamated with the touch of the painter’s brush, including words like patch, smear, smudge, blot, spot, stain, fleck, and many more in the field of the macchia notion, in turn derived from the Latin macula (stain) and the Greek makhe (battle, war). Its extended historical career is linked to the socalled rough or sketchy manner of painting and drawing, followed by the Romantic notion of original and incipient ideas in the artist’s mind as the real source of spontaneous sketching. In current discourses macchia is often lauded as the true mark of painting in its opposition to language and conceptual discourse, and identified with its innate sub-semiotic or pre-sign constitution. On close perusal the gestural texture of painterly marks is an immediately apparent feature of the dense impasto of Pauline’s paintings. In the loving struggle and constant battle she wages with her materials certain local areas in the texture of marks appear almost like amorphous flurries and chaotic skirmishes. Yet they also manifest an emergent dynamic of escalating movement, rippling muscles, vital and monumental bodies. Ambiguity and uncertainty 24

permeate this gestural texture. Suspended between revealing and concealing, visible and invisible, it attracts and absorbs our imaginative attention. The indeterminate and ambiguous macchia of painterly marks in fact primes the artwork for iconic augmentation in the spectator’s imagination, where this eventful fictional world’s imaginary figures of bull, cow and calf unfold and come alive in all their brute energy, raw vitality, ungainly power and mythical enchantment. However, such imaginative events of full spectator engagement and participation only come to pass where a painting has attained a certain life of its own — despite its fragmentary, incomplete or inchoate patchwork — being a work and also being at work, independently of its maker. Thus the works in the exhibition disclose an additional self-reflective modality of purgatorial weaning — one to which the artworks themselves are subjected. This happens when it is realised that our understanding of the often challenging labour of art-making and responsive art-experiencing — as agonising and enriching as these may be — has to be broadened beyond the metaphorical analogy with the natural process of giving birth to a new creature, its original author’s spiritual or intellectual offspring in the customary sense established in eighteenth-century thinking and copyright laws.

Fictional Example 2014, Two colour lithograph, Paper size: 78 x 57 cm, Image size: 68 x 52 cm, Edition: 15, Printed at Atelier le Grand Village

Shadow Barrier 1 2014, Oil on canvas, 15.5 x 24 cm

Shadow Barrier 2 2014, Oil on canvas, 33.5 x 24 cm

Shadow Barrier 5 2014, Oil on canvas, 26 x 19 cm

Shadow Barrier 15 2014, Oil on canvas, 19 x 14 cm

Ken Jou Plek 2015, One colour lithograph, Image size: 57 x 38 cm, Paper size: 57 x 38 cm, Edition: 10

Artworks have to undergo a transitional cultural process of weaning. This contingent process takes place in an uncertain period between two tenuous stages. It more or less arrives on the scene as the moment approaches when an artist has to confront the decision whether an artwork has been readied sufficiently to speak for itself (perhaps with the benefit of an accompanying title) when running the gauntlet of the critical eyes and responses of spectators at its first exhibition. Usually the latter occasion is where the weaning stage is completed. Visitors to this exhibition will naturally react in very dissimilar ways to the realisation that they specifically have been cast in this role, that their implicit presence in Purgatorium has been discovered, hidden in the allusive import of the blown-up sculptural version of a spiked weaning nose ring.

Some of these pictures obviously belong to the traditional portraiture genre, especially the laudatory portrait of the Brazilian author, Julián Fuks, included in the Pauline Gutter’s Artist’s statement. Others, by contrast, in various degrees appear to be decomposing or dissolving icons, for instance the striking upside-down head bearing the title, It Suffices. In diverse ways, whether painted or printed, the human visage is here marred and transmuted into diverse manifestations of macchia — at times puzzling, amorphous, uncanny, blemished, abyssal, ravaged, damaged, impaired or disturbed. Yet an undying spark of steady and unbroken humanity seems to glow in the darkness below their peeled heads, able to suffer, to abide and to withstand our troubled land’s hazardous purgatorial conditions of extreme danger and uncertainty.

This playful summoning riff emanates from the exhibition’s volatile tone of instability, insecurity and unpredictability — a dominant feature in the group of smaller pictures of human heads. The volatile tone is evoked by the extreme spontaneity in the rendering of these pictures which may be related to another strand in the macchia notion, involving incidental marks and improvisational collaboration with, rather than control of technique.

Prof Dirk van den Berg Department of History of Art and Image Studies, University of the Free State

Clear Gap

2014, Three colour lithograph, Paper size: 45 x 33 cm, Image size: 37.5 x 26.5 cm, Edition: 17, Printed at Atelier le Grand Village

Unknown Patient at Weskoppies 2015, Charcoal on Arches, 36 x 26 cm

Martatjie 2015, One colour lithograph, Image size: 40 x 27 cm, Paper size: 51.5 x 33.5 cm, Edition: 7

My Dina 2015, One colour lithograph, Image size: 38x 30 cm, Paper size: 50 x 33.5 cm, Edition: 12

What great strength has the incomplete, the unfinished, the inexistent. What great power over those who want themselves integral, intact, inviolable. Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and an urge propels me forward, some sort of vertigo seizes me. I lean my face against the mirror, I get so close I cannot see it, so close my face smashes into pieces. My skin becomes a battlefield of infinite cracks, countless gashes opened by the tiny soldiers of time. My eyes are two inert water lakes draining endlessly some blood – the blood from which wounds?, from what warriors? My nose, I see it, is the front end of the cavalry: my nose is equestrian. I think of Leonardo’s Gran Cavallo, I think of its Great Absence. For a moment I am myself absent. As the horse’s my existence is uncertain, my image falters under the strong and accurate light. Sometimes I feel I have to flee, I have to get away so that my face is not completely destroyed. I have to return to the world where things are certain and forget the precariousness in which I exist, the precariousness in which we are all immersed.

Que força tem o incompleto, o inacabado, o inexistente. Que apelo sobre os que se querem íntegros, os que se querem plenos. Às vezes olho meu rosto no espelho e um ímpeto me impele à frente, uma vertigem me consome o pensamento. Colo meu rosto no espelho, chego tão perto que meu rosto se despedaça, minha face se esfacela. Minha pele se faz um campo de batalha de fissuras infinitas, incontáveis talhos abertos pelos soldados minúsculos do tempo. Meus olhos são dois lagos de água inerte para onde nunca acaba de escorrer algum sangue, sangue de que feridas, de quais guerreiros? Meu nariz, eu vejo, é a ponta dianteira da cavalaria: meu nariz é equestre. Penso no Gran Cavallo de Leonardo, na estátua imensa destruída por soldados franceses, penso em sua Gran Ausência. Por um instante me ausento de mim, como a do cavalo minha existência se faz incerta, minha imagem vacila sob a luz forte e certeira. Às vezes tenho que me afastar para que meu rosto não se destrua por completo, para retornar ao mundo das coisas certas, para esquecer a precariedade em que existo, a precariedade em que estamos todos imersos.

This work is a collaboration with the Brazilian writer Julián Fuks whom I met last year at the Cité des Arts in Paris. Julián Fuks is a Brazilian writer, born in São Paulo in 1981. Among other works, he is the author of In Search of the Novel (Procura do romance) and Stories of Literature and Blindness (Histórias de literatura e cegueira). Both these works were shortlisted for the two most important literary prizes in Brazil: Jabuti and Portugal Telecom. In 2012, he was selected by the British magazine Granta as one of the best young Brazilian novelists.

Julián Fuks 2014, Charcoal on fabriano, 100 x 70 cm

Self-perfected 2015, Charcoal on fabriano, 88 x 70 cm

Devoted Dispute 2015, Charcoal on fabrialo, 100 x 70 cm

Shadow Barrier 4 2014, Oil on canvas, 52 x 37 cm

Don’t Know 2014, Oil on canvas, 30 x 24 cm

Gay Rights in Africa 2015, One colour lithograph, Edition: 10

Shadow Barrier 7 2014, Oil on canvas, 47 x 35 cm

Dagger in the Mouth 2014, One colour lithograph, Image size: 27 x 32 cm, Edition: 10, Printed at Atelier le Grand Village

Oblivion And 2015, One colour lithograph, Paper size: 67 x 45 cm, Image size: 56 x 35 cm, Edition: 10

Rubbing Effigy 2015, One colour lithograph, Image size: 46 x 34 cm, Paper size: 57 x 38 cm, Edition: 10

Hiervandaan Loop Ek `n Plek 2015, Two colour lithograph, Image size: 31 x 33 cm, Paper size: 57 x 38 cm, Edition: 12

Blinkvosperd 2015, One colour lithograph, Image size: 46 x 32 cm, Paper size: 57 x 38 cm, Edition: 10

Thinking: David 2015, One colour lithograph, Image size: 46 x 32 cm, Paper size: 57 x 38 cm, Edition: 10

Vaderlike Liefde 2015, One colour lithograph, Image size: 46 x 32 cm, Paper size: 57 x 38 cm, Edition: 10

Shadow Barrier 6

Shadow Barrier 9

2014, Oil on canvas, 27 x 19 cm

2014, Oil on canvas, 29 x 24 cm

Shadow Barrier 12

Shadow Barrier 14

2014, Oil on canvas, 29 x 23.5 cm

2014, Oil on canvas, 16 x 12 cm

Shadow Barrier 11 2014, Oil on canvas, 33 x 24 cm

Shadow Barrier 10 2014, Oil on canvas, 28 x 24 cm

Shadow Barrier 8 2014, Oil on canvas, 39 x 26 cm

Die Houtoog Gee 2015, One colour lithograph, Image size: 39 x 29 cm, Paper size: 57 x 38 cm, Edition: 14

Ahead 2014, One colour lithograph, Image size: 46 x 34 cm, Paper size: 57 x 38 cm, Edition: 10

CV – Pauline Gutter Personal Particulars

Solo Exhibitions

Address E-mail Website

* indicates catalogue/publication

PO Box 22240, Extonweg, Bloemfontein, 9313, South Africa art@paulinegutter.com www.paulinegutter.com

Qualifications 1999-2003 BA Degree in Fine Arts (Cum laude for painting), University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa

Permanent and Museum Collections

• • • • • • • • • • •

Bibliothèque nationale de France Luciano Benetton Collection Oliewenhuis Art Museum William Humphreys Art Gallery University of the Free State University of Stellenbosch North-West University ABSA Sanlam Standard Bank ATKV

Awards 2014 Alumni Award: University of the Free State, Bloemfontein 2013 Winner: ABSA L`Atelier Award 2012 Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans Award 2011 Winner: Helgaard Steyn Award for painting 2011 Top 10 finalist: Thami Mnyele Fine Arts Award 2011 Second round: BP Portrait Awards, London

2013 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2008 2005

The last of Us: Solo Exhibition, main festival programme, KKNK, Oudtshoorn* The last of Us: Solo Exhibition, Oliewenhuis Art Museum Reservoir, Bloemfontein* The last of Us: Solo Exhibition, William Humphreys Art Gallery, Potchefstroom* STAND: Solo Exhibition, main festival programme, Volksblad Arts Festival, Bloemfontein* STAND: Solo Exhibition, main festival programme, National Arts Festival, Potchefstroom* OPSLAG: Solo Exhibition, University of Stellenbosch* OPSLAG: Solo Exhibition, Oliewenhuis Art Museum Reservoir, Bloemfontein* OPSLAG: Solo Exhibition, University of Potchefstroom Art Gallery* The A Gallery, MAP, South Africa Modern Art Projects, Graskop, Mpumalanga

International Curated Exhibitions 2015 2014 2014 2013 2013 2007

South Africa: 10 x 12 @ SA: Group Exhibition, Fondazione Cini, Venezia* South Africa: 10 x 12 @ SA: Group Exhibition, Ca` dei Carresi, Treviso, Italy* South Africa: 10 x 12 @ SA: Group Exhibition, Museo Bilotti, Rome, Italy* Dialogues: Group Exhibition, Curated by SANAVA, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, France South African Woman Artists: Group Exhibition, Curated by SANAVA, National Art Gallery of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia KPSK: Group Exhibition, Beveren, Belgium

National Curated Exhibitions

Travelling Group Exhibition

2015 [my] PLACE | PLEK, Vryfees, Bloemfontein 2015 100 jarige bestaan Burger, Kaapstad 2014 Post Colonial Africa: Group Exhibition, KKNK, Oudtshoorn 2014 Blood, Sweat & Years: Group Exhibition ABSA gallery Johannesburg 2013 Interrupted: Group Exhibition, University of Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg

2013 Seven Deadly Virtues, Group Exhibition, KKNK and FRIED Contemporary, Pretoria 2013 Vanitas: Travelling Group Exhibition, AVA Gallery, Cape Town 2013 Vanitas: Travelling Group Exhibition, KKNK, Oudtshoorn 2012 Ik ben een Afrikaander: Group Exhibition, Woordfees, Stellenbosch* 2012 Ik ben een Afrikaander: Group Exhibition, KKNK* 2011 Ik ben een Afrikaander: Group Exhibition, Artspace, Johannesburg* 2012 Skilder met Woorde III: Group Exhibition, Aardklop, Woordfees 2013 and KKNK 2013 2011 Rendezvous: a focus on painting, Travelling Group Exhibition, part of the main festival at the National Arts Festival, Potchefstroom and University of Johannesburg Art Gallry, Johannesburg* 2010 Alooi: Group Exhibition, Woordfees, Stellenbosch* 2009 Alooi: Group Exhibition, Volksblad Kunstefees, Bloemfontein*

2012 ABSA L`atelier top 100 finalists: Group Exhibition, Aardklop, Potchefstroom* 2012 Terra Nullius: Group Exhibition, FRIED Contemporary Art Gallery, Pretoria* 2012 ABSA L`atelier Awards, Group Exhibition, Johannesburg* 2011 Shift: Group Exhibition, Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg 2011 Horse, Group Exhibition, curated by Ricky Burnett, CIRCA/Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg.* 2010 Minor Matters: Group Exhibition, Volksblad Kunstefees, Bloemfontein* 2010 Passage: Group Exhibition, FRIED Contemporary Art Gallery, Pretoria* 2009 Angels for Good: Group Exhibition, Grande Provance, Franschhoek 2008 Free State Meditations: Group Exhibition, University of Potchefstroom Art Gallery, Potchefstroom* 2003-2004 Xpozure Awards, Reservoir, Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Bloemfontein 2004 ABSA Corporate Collection: Group Exhibition, KKNK, Oudtshoorn 2004 Perspective 30: Group Exhibition, Johannes Stegman Art Gallery (UFS)* 2000-2003 Shed Your Skin: Sculptural Fashion Show, Presented by FRACTAL, Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Bloemfontein

Competitions 2009-2010 2002-2007 2004-2005 2001 2000

Finalist: ABSA L`atelier Awards, Johannesburg* Finalist: ABSA L`atelier Awards, Johannesburg* Finalist: Sasol New Signatures competition, Pretoria* Finalist: Vuleka Award, Belville, Cape Town Finalist: PPC Young Sculpture competition, Pretoria

Artist Residencies 2014 2014 2012

Six months residency at the CitĂŠ Internationale des Arts, Paris Six week residency at the Atelier le Grand Village, Massignac, France Shortlisted, top three artists: African Centre AIR residency, for both the Capp Street Project - USA and the Bundanon Trust, Australia. 57

Thank you Text

Special thanks to

Dirk van den Berg and JuliĂĄn Fuks

ABSA: Paul Bayliss, Stephan Erasmus and all staff at the Absa Gallery Dirk van den Berg

Photography Frikkie Kapp, Marie Girard, Richardt Strydom

Catalogue Layout Silverrocket Creative

Printing Assistant Lesego Motsiri

Andrew Lamprecht for opening the exhibition University of the Free State: Ben Botma Willem Boshoff Janine Allen Piet & Gerda Gutter Christiaan Diedericks Koot Louw Frikkie Kapp

Replica3D

Richardt Strydom

Sarel & Roelien Pretorius

Marie Girard Francios du Toit

Framers The atelier Winsens canvas EsrĂŠ rame Wessel Snyman Creative Framing

Amelia en Gavain Francis van der Riet at the Atelier le Grand Village Johannes Deetlefs Everard Read Gallery Sabrina Dean Bloempapier: Adie Wagener

Shadow Barrier 13 2014, Oil on canvas, 24 x 16.5 cm