Five far south artists will exhibit at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, on Friday and Saturday.
The event is billed as the largest international contemporary art fair in Africa with 100 exhibitors and some 25 000 visitors.
Atang Tshikare, of Fish Hoek, is the founder of Zabalazaa Designs, a studio where architecture meets graphic design. He says he is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist who 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.
In the past 20 years, his practice has evolved from street art and drawings to limited-edition collectible design. Working in various media, including bronze, ceramics, stone, and wood, he says his work takes inspiration from his fascination with zoomorphic shapes, biomorphic forms, vernacular architecture, and local landscapes.
Alexis Schofield works from a small studio in Kalk Bay and paints scenes captured from his life and surroundings.
“Growing up in Pretoria, I was influenced by the oppressive suburban landscape and harsh environments that people interacted with. Feeling like an outsider looking in, I never felt at home in social settings, and using this as a starting point, I developed a way to translate my viewpoint into paintings.
“Exploring the way people interact with the world is central to the way I construct my paintings. The viewer is shown a candid scene that they are both part of and removed from, developing a sense of alienation in the viewer that is never resolved.”
Katherine Glenday has spent much of her adult life in Kalk Bay and holds degrees in fine arts and English. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally.
The fineness of her porcelain vessels shows an enduring love of light and translucency, she says.
Lisa Ringwood is a ceramic artist living and working in Kommetjie.
She says she is inspired by nature and enthralled by the beauty around her whether it is walking in the mountains or sitting on a surfboard in the ocean.
“My work represents my intimate engagement with this world. Always being acutely aware of the encroachment of humans into wild places.”
She uses a technique called sgraffito to draw on the surface of the clay which is painted with coloured slips, oxides, and underglaze colours.
Kommetjie artist Karen Elkington studied fine art at the Ruth Prowse School of Art and graduated with distinction in 2021. Since then, she has had three solo exhibitions at prestigious galleries and contributed to several group shows.
“Environmental crisis and our current apathetic response is a concern I regularly investigate in my work,” she says.
“I am primarily a painter who combines figurative and abstract elements to create thought-provoking imagined scenes reflecting current issues. My work is very inspired by the outstanding beauty of the Cape Peninsula and an awareness that apathy and greed threaten to destroy this incredible environment. On the surface, my scenes can appear picturesque and otherworldly, but subtle signals in brushwork, colour, composition, and double-meaning text hint at a more foreboding message.”
The art fair is open from 11am to 7pm on both days. Tickets start at R150 and are available from WebTickets.
