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CURRENTLY PRESENTING: ‘Unseen Dimensions of the Known’ by Patrick Bongoy Patrick Bongoy

04.08.2022 - 29.09.2022

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GUILD Residency opens in Cape Town

IN SEPTEMBER: ‘Solastalgia’ by Stanislaw Trzebinski Stanislaw Trzebinski

08.09.2022 - 10.11.2022

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Aug 5

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"Earth remembers everything
How we have been ripped from her
Tortured, discarded, hidden or buried
We who birthed and loved the missing
Can never forget, never stop yearning
For the peace of finally knowing
Where, how a part of ourselves
Disappeared to, took that final breath
Our bodies may decay, return to dust
But our spirits prevail, our stories in wait
For those who will excavate the truth
The relentless seekers, the brave listeners."
- Poem by @malikandlovu

'Dream Weave' by @patrickbongoy
Recycled rubber from inner tubes
270 x 300 x 34 cm
Unique

Currently on show in 'Unseen Dimensions of the Known', our current solo exhibition by Patrick Bongoy, on view until 29 September.

Several poetry texts by Malika Ndlovu form part of the exhibition, the result of a close creative collaboration between the two artists. Ndlovu’s words and productions have appeared on pages and stages both locally and globally. As a poet, playwright, performer and arts administrator her contribution to South African arts, culture and poetry specifically, spans over 25 years.

#SouthernGuild #PatrickBongoy #MalikaNdlovu #tapestry #wallart #sculpture #woven #handmade #artwork #art #wallhanging #rubber #recycled #recycledart #materials #material #recycledmaterials #congo #DRC #collaboration #poetry #healing #gallery #artgallery #exhibition #soloexhibition #contemporaryart #abrstractact #abstract

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Aug 2

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OPENING THIS THURSDAY 'Unseen Dimensions of the Known' by @patrickbongoy, his first solo with Southern Guild since joining the gallery in 2021. This solo encompasses sculpture, woven tapestries, paintings and site-specific installations, including this work commissioned for @bmwsouthafrica, 'The Braided Bone Chamber'.

The artwork combines recycled rubber and coloured light, a material counterpoint that speaks to an awakening of consciousness and gentler way of living – a message that resonates with BMW’s evolution towards electromobility. Bongoy transforms the inner tubes of discarded tyres into textural forms that draw on Africa’s rich history of making by hand. The sculpture is illuminated from the inside, revealing a stencilled extract from ‘Lydia in the Wind’, a poem by @malikandlovu. A frequent collaborator of Bongoy’s, Ndlovu also wrote the poem from which this artwork derives its title.

Much of Bongoy’s work speaks to transformative thresholds, living on the edge, in limbo or between worlds, reaching beyond the violence of binaries, oversimplified narratives and realities. While these may seem volatile and intimidating spaces to explore, he does so with a deep listening and observation as integral to his creative process.

By entering such ‘chambers’ you are invited to keep letting go of first impressions and assumptions, to empty and deepen your listening, allowing openness and presence (with these works) to be an experience of quiet revelation and connection.

While 'The Braided Bone Chamber' resurfaces some of Bongoy’s consistent themes – regeneration, migration and courageous movement from the known to unknown – here he intentionally works with binding story/lines. These are stories we are born into, the stories ‘in our bones’ across generations and over time, the stories impacted by erasure and forgetting, the ones which haunt and ignite artists to re-collect, re-member and re-weave them. Such stories initiate a resonance with the stories of many others, offering us all a place for ongoing conversation in the literal sense and beyond words.

#SouthernGuild #PatrickBongoy #artwork #rubber #sculpture #bmwsouthafrica #bmw #poetry #malikandlovu

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Jul 29

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For @xigeralodge in Botswana's Okavango Delta, @dokterandmisses made 12 sideboards from their 'Kassena' series in walnut, ash and ebony. Each one was hand-painted in a custom colour to suit the scheme of the guest suite in which it is located. With their hyper-patterned surfaces, the 'Kassena' sideboards inject a playful sense of African modernity into the lodge's interiors.

#SouthernGuild #DokterandMisses #XigeraSafariLodge #xigera #safarilodge #botswana #okavangodelta #safaridesign #design #Africandesign #Africanpattern #pattern #paintedfurniture #furniture #sideboard #server #cabinet #workinprocess #designstudio #interiordesign #interiordecor #interiorinspo #interiorinspiration #colour #southafricandesign

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Jul 28

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Red Eucalyptus Vessel by @rodneyband, one of a new series of hand-turned wooden bowls by the master woodworker.

Each bowl is completely unique – its shape, size and form determined by the type of wood, its unique grain, age, size and number of branches. The outside of each bowl is turned on a lathe, while the insides are sculpted by Rodney using a tool he designed himself, that allows him to shape the bowl in an asymmetrical way best suited to the piece of wood.

#SouthernGuild #RodneyBand #rodneybandbowls #wood #woodworker #wooddesign #woodturning #woodworking #woodgrain #bowl #sculpture #unique #handmade #handcrafted #craft #crafted #crftsman #craftsmanship #texture #organic #natural #sustainable #sustainability #ecofriendly #ecodesign #ecoliving #carved #carvedwood

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Jul 27

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'Urban Africa' is a series of bronze candlesticks by @otto_du_plessis. Their cubist forms were cast from playful sculptures that Du Plessis created in corrugated cardboard. He is often drawn to forms derived from nature - think a giant gorilla whose chest opens up to reveal a drinks cabinet, or a hanging chandelier inspired by animal skeletons. So this family of modernist figures illustrates this talented sculptor's wide range and technical skill.

#SouthernGuild #OttoDuPlessis #bronze #sculpture #sculptor #bronzesculpture
#castbronze #candlesticks #candlestick #collectibledesign #functionalart #limitededitiondesign #cubist #cubism #modernist #modernistdesign #modernistafrica #designinspo

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Jul 25

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Selected works in 'Who We Should Not Be' by @naveldnav will still be on show until 19 August as we prep the gallery for our next solo show, 'Unseen Dimensions of the Known' by @patrickbongo, opening 4 August. Looking forward to seeing the works in dialogue with each other.

#SouthernGuild #NavelSeakamela #painting #painter #artwork #art #artist #contemporaryart #figurativeart #portraits #figurativeartist #gallery #artgallery #exhibition #artexhibition #colour #galleryinterior #curated #curation #AdamBirch #sculpted #seating #sculpture #timbersculpture

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Jul 22

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UP NEXT Southern Guild presents 'Unseen Dimensions of the Known' by @patrickbongoy, the artist’s first solo with the gallery, from 4 August to 30 September. The Cape Town-based artist’s work to date has largely reinterpreted the ongoing human and environmental erosion, violent economic extraction, forced migration and exploitation in his native DRC. This latest body of work extends towards themes of wider resonance with the human condition, beyond the physical aspects of our identities, and what personal or collective liberation and fulfilment of our purpose in being here means.

The works include sculpture, painting, woven tapestries and site-specific installations. Bongoy continues to create an innovative visual language with hessian and rubber and to engage in collaboration once more with South African poet @malikandlovu.

#SouthernGuild #PatrickBongoy #MalikaNdlovu #artist #art #fineart #contemporaryart #Africanart #Africanartist #Congo #DRC #Congolese #portrait #artistportrait #sculpture #tapestry #hessian #rubber #recycledmaterials #recycled #painting #materials #migration #woven #handmade #solo #exhibition #artexhibition #gallery #artexhibition

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Jul 21

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The portraits in @naveldnav's current solo, 'Who We Should Not Be', are both quiet and confronting, featuring Black figures resplendently in repose.

Nkgopoleng Moloi writes: "'Who We Should Not Be' is a contemplation on the lightness and darkness that defines our reality – be it in the hefty task of navigating expectations of how we should be in the world or the extraordinary weightlessness that comes with letting go. Through this work, the body — or at least the depiction of it — becomes a way to think about consciousness and the political, recalling Anne Truitt’s sentiment in her 1982 Daybook that 'consciousness seems to me increasingly inconceivable. I know more and more that I know nothing of its nature, range, and force except what I experience through the slot of this physical body.'"

Shown here:
Navel Seakamela
'mothoke motho ka botho I', 2022
Acrylic, charcoal on canvas
143 x 286 cm

#SouthernGuild #NavelSeakamela #portrait #portraitpainting #painting #painter #artist #artwork #art #artist #figurativeart #figurative #figurativepainting #Blackportrait #leisure #quiet #SouthAfricanartist #Africanartist #contemporaryartist #contemporaryart

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