Between Worlds, a new group exhibition at Barnard Gallery weaves a narrative through the visual languages of figuration and abstraction. 

This intersectional collection of works considers the unexpected connections between these respective languages from different contexts and backgrounds. The ensuing ‘conversation’ provides the viewer with an interpretive link between the various worlds when these visual languages originate.

The paintings of Swedish-born South African artist Tom Cullberg chart territories between seemingly tangible and intangible worlds, presenting the viewer with collections of represented objects that explore both fictitious storytelling as well as real or recorded histories. These signifiers or symbols hover or float over abstract grounds that, like the mechanics of memory appear in a state of flux.

By contrast, the abstract paintings of Cape Town-based artist Nicholas Hales focus on form and colour. His compositions have a meditative quality, encouraging non-linear interpretation and conveying a sense of existence.

Arguably closer in dialect to the paintings of Nicholas Hales, yet speaking a distinct language of their own, the work of Jo O’Connor explores colour and form in deceptively simple compositions.

By contrast, the narrative works of Zimbabwean artist Richard Mudariki, while as methodical as O’Connor in terms of their structure and design, communicate to the viewer through the language of satire and political commentary. And yet, despite the contrast of their intent both artists celebrate a patterned language that speaks to their respective cultural and art historical influences.   

The meticulously rendered paintings of Peter Eastman appear to hover between representation and abstraction. Held in shallow relief depictions, his images often remain nearly invisible until the viewer is positioned correctly, allowing light to cast the images into relief. Exploring forested areas and dense undergrowth his paintings are created in two tones, a dark background and light foreground, and as such are in effect paintings of light reflected in these dark forested valleys.

Although also originally ‘drawn from nature’, the more recent paintings of Berlin-based South African artist Alexia Vogel venture into more abstract territory. In these bold new works, brushstrokes hold their own significance; marks made become events in and of themselves. Having always been directed first and foremost by the process – the spontaneous flow of paint on canvas, the instinctual thrust of gesture – Vogel now brings the physicality and movement of paint to centre stage while still referencing the lush and dreamy landscapes of her earlier work.

Between Worlds participating artists: Tom Cullberg, Peter Eastman, Richard Mudariki, Justin Dingwall, Jo Hummel, Nicholas Hales, Alexia Vogel, Jaco van Schalkwyk, Alastair Whitton, Lien Botha, Jo O’Connor and Jennifer Morrison.

Between Worlds will be open to the public from 6 – 30 March Monday through Friday 09:00 – 16:00 or by appointment outside of these hours.

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Barnard Gallery has been participating in the Investec Cape Town Art Fair since its inception in 2013 and will once again present a stunning collection of works for its 11th edition.

Barnard Gallery’s showcase at the fair will highlight paintings and photographs from both primary and secondary markets. The works primarily delve into diverse narratives that explore the concepts of identity, memory, and geography within a changing socio-political African context.

Richard Mudariki

Collectors will have a rare opportunity to view and acquire the artist’s expansive and sought after 2018 canvas titled ‘Reform, Format, Scan’ created on location at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa during the artist’s residency fellowship in 2018. In addition to this the artist has produced another signature and satirical work for the event titled ‘At the Shebeen in Cape Town’. This painting is a reinterpretation of Édouard Manet’s ‘A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882). It captures the lively and intricate culture of the Shabeen, depicting a visual story that reflects both the past and present commentary on alcohol, politics, and societal dynamics in South Africa’s townships.

Mohau Modisakeng

In his large and iconic photograph titled ‘Diatola’ (2014), the Sowetan-born artist explores the idea of visual narrative. Citing the influence of his mother, a ‘prophetess’, his images invoke dreams and visions that become markers of a personal and collective memory intertwined with the violent legacies of South Africa’s troubled past and the resulting deep divides of the post-apartheid present. 

Justin Dingwall

Photographer and artist Justin Dingwall juxtaposes elements of contemporary African fashion photography with hand-made textile components, creating exquisite and intriguing portraits that reference and challenge past ethnographic images.

Tshepiso Seleke

Tshepiso Seleke, an upcoming photographer from Johannesburg, has captured the social and economic status of black lives in his series called ‘Sowetan’. The photos aim to give voice to the marginalised community where he lives and works. Through his pictures, Seleke shows solidarity with his subjects and portrays them as strong and sincere.

Jaco van Schalkwyk

In his painting, titled ‘Bleu de Hue’, Johannesburg-based artist Jaco van Schalkwyk presents the viewer with a large monochromatic landscape that explores the possibility of an otherworldly or alternate landscape – a subtle but timeous comment on the current state of man’s relationship to this place we call ‘home’. In conversation with Van Schalkwyk’s landscape paintings, award winning lens based artist Lien Botha presents photographic dioramas that investigate notions of preservation and display in the context of natural history museums.

Peter Eastman

The artist’s ongoing body of work, titled Deep Chine, which simply means deep valley or kloof, references a particular piece of land in the Southern Cape that he first visited during his childhood, a place he periodically returns to. The landscape of this specific area is always in flux as it grows, its fragile sandstone cliffs eroding and collapsing, subtly changing the same space upon each visit. Eastman’s paintings are done in two tones, a dark background and light foreground, and as such are in effect paintings of light reflected in this dark forested valley.

Tom Cullberg

The detailed panel paintings and hand-made objects of Swedish-born South African artist Tom Cullberg explore both fictitious story telling as well as real or recorded histories. With humour and wit his paintings consider processes of association and recognition in the reading of both private and public narratives. Housed in his now signature glass-fronted cabinets these installations reiterate a familiar form in art history: the cabinet of curiosity. That said, Cullberg’s installations hew to a more contemporary and impressionistic tradition of cabinets created by private individuals to enshrine personal experience.

Alexia Vogel

Alexia Vogel has been refining her signature visual language in her recent works. While her previous work was heavily influenced by floral and tropical motifs, her latest pieces have distilled these themes into a more abstract form. Her bold canvases and works on paper feature brushstrokes that hold significant meaning, and each mark made becomes an event in and of itself. Previously directed by her process, such as the spontaneous flow of paint on canvas and instinctual gestures, Vogel now brings the physicality and movement of paint to the forefront of her work.

Paul Senyol

Paul Senyol’s energetic and playful paintings are a crafted response to his wonderings through various land and cityscapes. The colours and textures of urban and natural environments inform his spontaneous practice in the studio where every material he uses – acrylics, pastels, ink, pencils and spray paint – is chosen for the particular mark it can contribute to a finished composition. 

Jo Hummel

Towards abstraction the work of British artist Jo Hummel is characterised by a painted and paper collaged surface on which she employs spontaneous variations of space, colour and form. Speaking about the making of the work, Hummel describes her chosen material (paper) as domestic and ephemeral. Her paintings are built up in layers and with joinery, often revealing fault lines and scars. For her the action of making is an essential ritual used to make sense of, and fuse her internal and external environments. 

Jennifer Morrison

Moving further into the realm of abstraction the paintings of London-based South African artist Jennifer Morrison project a preoccupation with colour, texture, form and the richness and flexibility of oil paint. They are unapologetically fierce in their celebration of the process of painting wherein the medium and method of their making is itself the message. Having explored the language of abstraction in painting for decades she is drawn to the relationship of one colour to another, mark making and the quality of brushstrokes. Morrison’s swirling, gestural marks are immediate and direct and challenge the viewers expectation of a painting: Telling a story is not her objective; it is the visual, emotional, intuitive impact and experience that is central to her practice.

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Local artist Andrew Putter’s pop-up exhibition Flowers of the Cape Peninsula, Vol. 1 taking place at the Barnard Gallery on 2 December 2023 is inspired by his love for indigenous plants.

Inspired by his long-term interest in indigenous plants, each of Andrew Putter’s twelve new artworks – collectively titled Flowers of the Cape Peninsula, Vol. 1 – focuses on a different plant indigenous to the Cape Peninsula, where he has lived and worked his entire life. Andrew’s new body of art brings to mind 17^th century Dutch flower paintings, Henri Matisse’s paper cut-outs, Andy Warhol screen prints and David Hockney’s iPad drawings. Over the five years of preparing to make these new works, Andrew returned again and again to these influences. Curator Alastair Whitton sat down with Andrew to find out more about his latest work.

How important is a sense of place in your work as an artist?

I grew up in Pinelands,  a rather dreary suburb of Cape Town, in the 70s and  80s. Henry Symonds – the influential artist and teacher – came to talk to the creative kids at our high school one day. He challenged our naive eurocentrism and encouraged us to take an interest in our local world instead. What a brilliant idea! I decided there and then to live my whole life in the suburbs of Cape Town, a decision that has inspired me creatively ever since.

Your new art references both the hyper-local and also the faraway. Can you say more?

On the local front, my latest pictures look for new ways of representing flowers that are hyper-indigenous to within walking distance of where I’ve lived my whole life. From faraway, the artist David Hockney has always been a big influence for me. When I was looking for a new medium to work with a few years ago, David Hockney’s ravishing iPad prints made quite an impression. These new flower pictures of mine were all made on an iPad, thanks to Mr Hockney.

Your latest art exhibition is a pop-up event. Why is that?

Architect Andre Vorster and I originated the first MCQP party in 1994, which got me interested in how an event can also be an artwork. Those arty MCQP parties were partly inspired by the question: what would happen if an art exhibition only lasted as long as the opening night? The pop-up form of my latest art exhibition is a return to this kind of concentrated, you-snooze-you-lose celebration.

Flowers of the Cape Peninsula, Vol. 1  will be on display at the Barnard Gallery from 3-6pm on 2 December 2023 .

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Local artists Lien Botha and Jaco van Schalkwyk combine their talents in a joint exhibition titles After Nature, running at the Barnard Gallery from 31 August 2023. They chat to us about collaboration and the connections between their artworks.

In many ways, it seems that your upcoming joint exhibition After Nature, opening at Barnard Gallery on 31 August, is a long time coming given your shared interests and commitment to collaboration in the arts. Please would you tell us a bit more about the specific motivation for this project and how you hope it will be ‘read’ by those who will encounter it?

Lien Botha: It is interesting to note that both Jaco and myself were artists in residence on the German Island of Sylt during some stage of our careers, so perhaps our alliance was presaged by that sediment of the Wadden Sea. During the Cape Town Art Fair in February 2023; Alastair Whitton, fellow artist, and art director at Barnard, suggested such collaboration and when we started the discussion in April, it soon became evident that our individual processes and concerns were part of a symbiotic drift. The ‘reading’ Is best described by writer and exhibition text contributor, Vernon Head, as an “interconnected offering made into an aesthetic story; our desperate story of our last place for hope; our intrinsic belonging; our wild identity fashioned in the words of art. “We have specifically explored the juxtaposition of differing scales, and the ‘timbre’ of the exhibition is one of toned-down colour, which will hopefully underscore the contemplative nature of this collaboration.

Jaco van Schalkwyk: I have been particularly interested in collaborating with fellow artists the past few years; I believe brainstorming and conversations between different artist’s work are valuable to the art discourses of our times and society in general. Such is the case of collaborating with Lien Botha, an artist whom I greatly admire. I also see the gallery as a collaborative partner, discussing themes, negotiating the exhibition space, curating the works and planning the installation and the architecture of a proposed exhibition.

I have often noted the subtle but clear connections between your works. Although operating in distinct mediums there seem to be a number of points of commonality. Perhaps most evident is your shared interest in, and celebration of the natural world – a concern for and commitment to ‘conservation’ in the broadest sense. Furthermore, you both have an abiding fascination with Natural History museums, ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ and natural science in general. Perhaps you could each elaborate a bit more on this?

Lien Botha: I have always worked primarily from my environment: the physical landscape as well as the internal landscape, and from this wide space comes small moments and events that can trigger an idea or concept. It is usually the ordinary that informs my work: love, loss, the memory of an ancestor, the life cycle of an insect. The world is an intricate place, fluctuating between order and disaster. But yes, you are right. . . . I have often found solace In Natural History museums.

Jaco van Schalkwyk: Lien and I are both inspired by nature and the conservation and documentation of our natural environment in South Africa and beyond. We both like to travel and document our experiences in nature, also visiting Natural History museums and so-called ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ when the opportunity allows. I have been aware of this mutual interest for quite a while and was particularly inspired by Lien’s ‘Wonderboom’ project and publication that coincided with my solo exhibition “- arium” at Barnard Gallery in 2017. I also believe our love of storytelling is something that our work has in common – Lien through her photography and writing and for myself the juxtaposing of different paintings in series, groupings or installations. The exhibition title ‘After Nature’ also describes this commonality in our work; it could mean an apocalyptic ‘after’ we (humans) have destroyed nature on this planet, but also “ to paint or record after nature” ( i.e., realism and the imitation of nature). Lien’s recording of museum dioramas and the monochromatic palette of my works is not always ‘true to nature’ though. This almost creates an ‘otherworldly’ feeling or a constructed ‘new world’. My larger landscape painting compositions almost become backdrops or potential ‘new habitats’ for Lien’s juxtaposed bird images.

Lien, would it be fair to say that your photo constructions are of a poetic nature and how does your parallel role as an author impact or influence the way you make visual images?

Lien Botha: In a sense, the camera is both container and mediator which allows one to venture into the world and collect clues that could become part of a chronicle. I have also been intrinsically drawn to the ritualistic aspect of the medium: gathering material and equipment, observing weather reports for outside shoots, getting up early, waiting for light, clouds, or the right season. The dovetailing of image and text, which I realized in my first novel ‘Wonderboom’ (2015), remains a focal point of my practice.

Jaco, although you don’t consider yourself a photographer, you routinely use a camera as a tool in your practice. Perhaps you could expand on the relationship between your paintings and your use of photography in developing your compositions?

Jaco van Schalkwyk: My process always starts with photography, since I am a realist painter and take photos as reference wherever I go, and I also document my immediate environment. I print many of these photos to juxtapose in the studio(sometimes in strange ways to create new landscapes altogether). Sharing these photos and collages with Lien was also the way we brought this exhibition to life.

I have always felt that beyond your shared interest in the natural world and the notion of ‘landscape’ in general, that there is a sense of almost ‘remembrance’ and a certain ‘longing to belong’ in your works. How does your attachment to particular geographies affect and influence the works you make?

Lien Botha: For me, the very nature of photography alludes to the memory keeper. And through that repository, one works with what engages your days and nights at a given moment in time; you toil in order to try and make sense of the past through the present.

Jaco van Schalkwyk: I would like to think that I am not attached to only one place in particular, but more broadly to the planet and therefore conservation in general. We live in a time where almost every corner of this world has been discovered and documented; sadly, our greed and hunger for power as humans has left many of these environments and animal species under serious threat or even on the verge of extinction. Like the curious artists of the past, I am also endeavouring to document nature, but perhaps for a different reason; ‘After Nature’ is almost a final recording or documentation of nature and life on this planet as we know it.

After Nature will be on display at the Barnard Gallery from 31 August to 10 October 2023.

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South African born, UK-based painter, Jennifer Morrison’s paintings project a preoccupation with colour, texture, form and the richness and flexibility of oil paint; they are unapologetically fierce in their celebration of the process of painting wherein the medium and method of their making is itself the message. Cape Town-based Art Director and curator Alastair Whitton⁣ sat down to talk with Jennifer ahead of her first solo‎ exhibition at The Barnard Gallery titled The Depth of Things.

Although originally from South Africa, you have lived and worked in the UK for many years. How has exposure to a significant art capital, such as London, shaped your practice as an artist and to what extent has where you work influenced the way you work as a painter?

I have lived in London for thirty years but I travel to South Africa about four times a year. It’s very important to me to keep my link with South Africa. In London I’m extremely lucky to be able to see amazing exhibitions and to have wonderful art museums and galleries on my doorstep. I think this exposure informs my practice in a kind of general way. I think that the colours and forms of South Africa are generally bolder than those in England but I have come to appreciate and love the variation of greys and greens in England. These things all effect my work.

But, to be honest, I think if my studio were to be in Finland or Brazil I’m not so sure that my work would be very different.

Post Pollock, painters increasingly found a new freedom of expression and by mid- century the language of abstraction was fairly widely spoken. That said, painters often still suffer from what I would refer to as the ‘burden of the image’ particularly in more conservative contexts where the appreciation of painting is still often limited to how well a landscape or portrait is rendered. Has your work always explored the language of abstraction and what role do you see yourself playing in this ongoing conversation.  

I have been dealing with abstraction for many decades now. I abandoned all figuration mid way through art school. I found that what excites me, what draws me in and seduces me is the relationship of one colour to another, the quality of a brushstroke and texture and shape. This, of course, can be appreciated in a Van Gogh painting but I feel that great beauty and feeling and depth can be made purely through the use of colour, shape and mark making. I’m more interested in how to paint than what to paint. Just as a series of musical notes can convey a feeling, a mood, a memory, so too can abstract painting. We all understand and interpret abstract qualities like rhythm, repetition, soft notes, the darkness or brightness of colours, areas of emptiness, the direction of marks. Small children can understand this. It is a language.

Viewers of art, and particularly painting, often tend to look for a ‘message in the medium’ routinely asking what it represents, what it’s about and more specifically what does it mean. Your paintings appear to be unapologetically fierce in their celebration of the process of painting wherein the medium and the method of making is itself the message. Perhaps you could comment on your choice of medium and the manner in which you engage with it?

I work predominantly with oil on canvas. There is something about the richness and flexibility of oil paint that continues to enthrall and frustrate and challenge me. I engage with it in very different ways. Sometimes I allow it to do its own thing: to drip, to smudge, to land in big blobs or to barely scratch the surface, and at other times, often within the same painting, I control it very carefully.

I actually think there is a ‘message in the medium’ but not in the way you describe above. It’s not related to representation but in the sense that a feeling is conveyed through the abstract elements.

I think that perhaps many people need an artwork to be about something and this can’t be found very easily, or at all, in an abstract work. I suppose if a figure or a tree or something can be identified it is easier to attach meaning to it. I don’t really need to know what a painting means. It seems almost taboo now to talk about painting in its own right. There seems to be a need for something else to be attached to it. I’m not really sure why this is but it might be to do with the feeling that art is somehow validated if it is about something, particularly if it ticks the current boxes like identity, environment and so on. I don’t need art to tell me a story or give me a message or to educate me.

I just need a visual reason for it to exist. A visual reason. Nothing else.

Although your works don’t represent things from life or the visible world in the literal sense i.e., they are not figurative works of art, they seem, nonetheless, to be powerful manifestations of a very real and personal response to life. Could you perhaps elaborate on a comment you made in a recent film study with reference to your practice where you said that your paintings are an attempt to convey “what it is to be human and alive”?

I think that, in a sense, all the art that a person makes is a kind of self portrait. Even if it’s not one’s intention the self is there no matter what.

I think that what I meant with that statement was that to paint, to make an artwork, is to grapple and play and struggle with the object in front of you and with what is inside of you. This is the human condition! It is also about knowing when to relinquish control and when to exercise it, when to take risks and when to be cautious. You are open to success and to failure. These are all human concerns. The bit about being alive is I think twofold: I nearly lost my life many years ago and so I’m acutely aware that life is about movement. It is about constant change. It’s about physical and mental and emotional movement. I’m aware that I need to be alive in order to paint! Not only in the sense that my heart is beating but that I’m alive and sensitive to myself and what’s around me. I try to convey movement in my paintings – something moving from one place to the other – which can be read as an internal or external happening.

Form and colour, two central components in both art and design, play a significant role in your compositions, to what degree are your choices with respect to these consciously made, or is it, as I sense it might be, a more fluid and unconscious process for you in the construction of your works? Perhaps you could  comment on the method of their making.

I work very intuitively. I don’t do any preparatory drawings and I don’t think too far ahead when I’m making a painting. I have a mental image of a rough composition and I start with a couple of colours. From there I take it where it leads me. So yes, you’re right, it is a very fluid process.

With this series of paintings I am contrasting gestural and intuitive mark making with very deliberate and controlled painting. I think this might be an attempt to bring two sides of me together: the part which is open to accident, which is prepared to take risks and which uses my whole body to make marks in a very physical and energetic way, and the part which is ordered and controlled and precise and more cerebral. I think this makes for an interesting juxtaposition where these two parts of the work can confound but also strangely compliment each other. Perhaps it’s a kind of wish fullfillment!

The Depth of Things will be on display at the Barnard Gallery from 11 July to 24 August 2023.

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During the course of his career, Peter Eastman has explored a variety of paint techniques and mediums. Over the last few years, the artist’s substrate of choice has been aluminium to which he applies amongst other things enamel, resin, wax, graphite and oil paint. Cape Town-based Art Director and curator Alastair Whitton⁣ sat down to talk with Peter ahead of his first solo‎ exhibition at The Barnard Gallery titled Even Rocks Melt in the Sun.

What influence, if any, has your previous work as an antiques restorer in London had on your own painting practice?

Working with antiquities exposed me to a variety of techniques and methods of making, and perhaps a deeper understanding of materials and how they age over time. For certain projects one had to mimic the techniques of the original, whether that was working in metal, stone or an Egyptian sarcophagus.

Although first and foremost a painter, your practice nonetheless relies quite heavily on your use of photography and other technological aids. Perhaps you could elaborate more on your process of production as well as the ‘origination’ of your images?

In the 90’s when I was at school I loved the aesthetic of the photocopied image. We spent a lot of time photocopying Particularly in black and white, partly for cost but also because it looked better. It was also the machine that you could operate without the staff of the copy shop interfering which allowed for more time to experiment with cutting up and over copying. The degradation that occurs through multiple copies of the same image is something very beautiful…I realise now in retrospect that the tool of the photocopy is perhaps something of that era and informs the aesthetic of my works. The paintings are of course very entangled with photography. Not quite painting not quite photography, but I’m happy for them to occupy this strange hybrid space.

Your preferred substrate of aluminium for your works has been a defining feature of your practice for at least a decade now; what made you gravitate to this material and what bearing does it have on your painting process?

Painting on metal goes back to the Dutch painters of the 17th century who used it for the precision and vibrancy of colours the flat surface allows. For me this surface also gives a neutral starting point where at the beginning stages of priming I create a grain of vertical brush marks which I use to create the half tones when painting the image.

With growing sensitivity to climate change issues globally, environmental concerns have, to some extent, become an important part of contemporary artistic discourse. Does the particular focus of your subject matter have any bearing on this prevailing dialogue?

I don’t think it does overtly, but this piece of forest that I paint over and over is ancient old growth forest that has never had any kind of human intervention on it, one is acutely aware of this when looking at the old trees, but also in things like the thick spongy humus of the forest floor. Due to the steep geography of this location, it was unable to be affected by logging in the 19th century. I do however always have a feeling of anxiety when I spend time here that this place and others like it can disappear so easily as we develop and destroy wild places. Perhaps that feeling of fragility, balance and connectedness comes through in the paintings 

Although I am not quite able to ‘put my finger’ on it, I have always sensed something of the ‘oriental’ in your Deep Chine works – not simply their particular style and aesthetic, but something, somehow deeper than this. Would I be accurate in my perception, and if so, perhaps you could explain your works connection, if any, with the Far East?

It might be relevant to explain how my family came to own this piece of land. My grandfather was born in Yokohama, Japan in 1914. His German/Prussian Jewish parents had left Germany and emigrated in 1850 to America. It was a family of merchants and in 1853 Japan had opened its doors to the outside world. The three brothers in the family started a business trading in silk with Japan around the 1870’s. The siblings were stationed between New York, San Francisco and Yokohama. The company was called Mendelson Brothers.

In this period the desire for objects, art and silks from Japan was enormous in the west. It seems to have been a successful business but perhaps due to the earthquake in San Francisco in 1912 and the devastating earthquake in Yokohama in 1923 the business closed and my grand-fathers family moved to South Africa. When his mother died, he inherited money that came from this Mendelson brothers trading business. With this money he bought this large piece of land with deep kloofs and hills that he named “Deep Chine”. He never lived there and the only house on the property is a small off grid cottage.  Growing up we had quite a few art objects at home, netsuke and Japanese woodblock prints of this era that the family had bought while living in Japan, original Hokusai prints amongst others. Looking back I can see elements that I loved in these images as possible influences in my painting aesthetic, I was particularly always entranced by the one image of white snow falling against a dark sky.

Even Rocks Melt in the Sun will be on display at the Barnard Gallery from 6 June to 4 July 2023.

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Interludes, a series of exhibitions in the Barnard Gallery‘s second space, adjacent to the main gallery, was introduced in 2022. Smaller in scale and scope this room allows for a more intimate and perhaps experimental engagement. The Barnard Gallery are pleased to present an installation by Swedish South African artist Tom Cullberg, which includes a guest contribution by Cape Town painter Guy Simpson.

In this Interlude, Tom Cullberg presents an installation integrating his cabinets of paintings on a mural in his gestural abstract style. The cabinet works: You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory; and A Broken Frame, reference notions of time, movement, place and memory while exploring themes of darkness and light. Reflecting this, Guy Simpsons’ painted light switch on the mural acts both as a metaphor and an instrument in this transition. The mural references scribbles or newsprint- unknown text. The installation in the gallery’s smaller exhibition room evokes the form of a larger-than-life double page book spread, immersing the viewer in a visual narrative. We are simultaneously both onlookers and participants within an unfolding narrative.

For your last exhibition, Local Stories, at Barnard in 2022 you exhibited 10 cabinet installations; how did you arrive at this new body of work, exhibited at both the Investec Cape Town Art Fair and currently on show for Barnard’s Interlude?

I am interested in the associative nature of images and how painting combinations form stories. Where before I combined different images in a painting on the same canvas, now separate painted wood panels and sculpted wooden objects forms the “story” on shelves in a cabinet.

When discussing Sea-side Town in Finding New Life in an Old Form (the publication for Cullberg’s 2018 solo exhibition) Sean O Toole, asks; “How does one belong to a place?”. Upon viewing your works, I find viewers from different generations and cultures connect with one object on display, and then interrogate all the other pieces, looking for further familiarity. How do you interpret and explore the culture and time in which these moments occur?

Although some of the subjects are specifically “mine” and there’s a private underlying narrative in my work, there are simultaneously common narratives and points of association accessible to many. Often about books, music, travel,  communication and the notion of home. I want to encourage the viewer to look closely and to take time for thinking and making connections. A Johannesburg painter I chatted to at the art fair said my works made her think about her upbringing and family life and her relation to books. This despite us growing up in different cultures, times and places. I hope that through the way my paintings and objects are made (a time consuming and often laborious, hand-made process) and the curation of my pieces, I encourage these interpretations and explorations around these connections and links to memories and the fabric of being human.

I’ve noted the gestural abstract style mural appears across various works, such as The Average Truth and Us Only. What are you conveying with this technique and what is its significance across your works?

I see them as brain activity and/or script in-between images. I have throughout my career deployed different abstract styles running parallel to the figurative painting practice. It’s a way to engage with the subject and the materiality (the paint and the brush) of painting in a completely different way but always with a maintained close relationship to the figurative stuff.

What was your thinking behind the inclusion of Cape Town-based painter Guy Simpson in your interlude show?

One of the themes of the two cabinets in the show is around illumination. The illumination when remembering, the light on a beach, the night-lit football stadium, a forest fire, the man on fire in the painting of Pink Floyd’s cover for the album Wish you Were Here, the book titles: Slow dazzle, Isamu Noguchis Akari lights, AC/DC and Back in Black etc. When conceptualising the show and knowing I wanted to do a wall painting I roped in Guy, whose work I feel a kin to and commend, to paint one of his signature light switches on the wall. Playing within the rules of engagement of my work; the suspension of disbelief and the theme of light and dark, it adds a finality to the room: an on and an off.

Win

One lucky VISI reader will win a signed copy of Tom Cullbergs’ Finding New Life in an Old Form and Local Stories, valued at R2 000. To stand a chance of winning, enter the competition here.

Both collectors editions are published by Barnard and are available for purchase at barnardgallery.com

Interludes will be on display at the Barnard Gallery from 23 February to 11 April 2023.

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Berlin-based South African artist Alexia Vogel‘s latest work might be her most abstract and introspective collection to date. Cape Town-based Art Director and curator Alastair Whitton⁣ sat down to talk with Alexia ahead of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair and her‎ new solo‎ exhibition Strange Light.

Since graduating from the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2013 you have presented six solo exhibitions including a solo booth presentation at the FNB Joburg Art Fair in 2015. Perhaps you could share something of your practice and how you go about birthing and developing a new body of work for each solo show?

My practice has always been very process driven, each painting is born out of spontaneity, gestural mark making and the fall of paint on the canvas or paper. The composition slowly gets pulled out of the surface, marks are accentuated by being brought forward or pushed back.

I think each exhibition is developed in a similar way. I often make smaller paper works to start, sometimes they are watercolour monotypes or oil paintings and they act as a starting point for larger works on canvas.

I never start a body of work with a central idea or concept, that comes later once I have had time to think about the works and where they are heading. It is quite an interesting process, often personal, and ends up exposing moments or emotions from my own life.

Although your work has always referenced the natural world, albeit somewhat obliquely, it would appear in this new body of work that paint and process predominate. Arts writer Charis de Kock, in her exhibition text for your upcoming show ‘Strange Light’ at Barnard Gallery in Cape Town, notes that this is your “most abstract collection to date” and interestingly also your “most introspective”. Perhaps you could respond to her insight and articulate your relationship to the notion of abstraction as well as how your recent relocation to Berlin may have informed this new body of work?

As mentioned above, the idea of the body of work comes only once I am really in the thick of things and most of the paintings have been completed. The introspection is an important part of the process and probably the most difficult part because it illuminates a lot about myself to me.

Moving to Berlin has been a big challenge, and I’ve struggled a bit with the change. Moving further into abstraction happened quite naturally, I was painting very jungley paper works when I first arrived in Berlin and it somehow didn’t feel quite right. I had left my home, where I was often immersed in nature and moved to a very energetic, gritty city and my imaginative jungle references suddenly felt quite foreign.

The work moved to a more floaty, abstraction- reflecting an in between state almost like being underwater and a bit out of place. My marks referred less to foliage and I ended up allowing them to just be brush marks or echoes of them.

The natural world hasn’t disappeared completely, I think it will always form part of my subject, but now I work in a way that is a bit more abstracted. We are no longer looking at a landscape or into the distance; now we are smack bang in the middle of something a lot more intangible; a memory of a landscape, a feeling of it or the light that could be passing through it. 

I have had the privilege of being privy to your practice for a decade. I recall, on first encounter, being captivated and almost mesmerised by the powerful immersive quality of your paintings. Seemingly a characteristic feature of your work, this attribute has developed over time and continues to permeate your paintings. Do you consider this an innate trait of your work or is it something you have consciously and actively worked at achieving? 

I always hope to make works that are immersive, that has been a goal of mine since learning about Claude Monet’s Les Nymphéas, and it was entrenched once I had the opportunity to visit them myself at Musée de l’Orangerie. I have found that achieving an immersive quality happens both intuitively by gestural mark making, and consciously by learning and understanding my medium. The painting process and the way that I allow the paint to flow is a very immersive experience and one I hope gets translated through the works themselves.

You have spoken of your admiration for a number of the modern masters, in particular the French painter Claude Monet, as well as various contemporary painters including British artist Peter Doig. How important is the idea of ‘painterly lineage’ to you as an artist and to what extent do you feel this informs your own work?  

Very important! There is nothing better than being ignited and inspired when seeing delicious paintings that make you want to run back to the studio and pick up your brush.

Painting is really tough, sometimes the energy for it is lost and it gets tiresome and frustrating. Like any career, there are burn outs and moments where you feel you don’t want to do it anymore, and I think looking at other artists and what they are making or have made is really helpful in fueling the passion.

In 2018 you were awarded a residency by the Southern African Foundation for Contemporary Art at their European premises in St. Emilion, France and you are about to embark on a journey to Japan where you will be learning the ancient art of Mokuhanga – traditional water-based woodblock printing. How integral are residency programs to an artist’s development and what are you hoping to gain from your upcoming time in Japan?

I think It is important to be taken out of your comfort zone and be given new parameters to work within; new spaces, new techniques and new people are integral in informing shifts and growth for an artists practice and opens it up to so many more possibilities. I think residencies or courses are a fantastic space to allow a shift in perspective.

Moments of uncertainty, newness or change encourage one to play and that is something that I really value and am excited about.

The Mokuhanga workshop will not only be an opportunity to learn a new technique but also a chance to be completely immersed in the Japanese culture and learn about the tradition of wood block printing at its source.

Strange Light will be on display at the Barnard Gallery from 23 February to 04 April 2023, and at the Investec Cape Town Art fair from 17 – 19 February 2023.

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UK-based artist Jo Hummel’s work is characterised by a painted and paper collaged surface on which she employs spontaneous variations of space, colour and form. Cape Town-based Art Director and curator Alastair Whitton⁣ sat down to talk with Jo ahead of her‎ first solo‎ exhibition on the African continent titled‎ Looking Out.

On encountering your work for the first time I could not help but think of Henri Matisse’s large ‘cut out’ and masterful collage, titled ‘The Snail’ (1953) that hangs at TATE Britain in London. What affinity, if any, do you have with the work of this late great artist, whose latter works arguably paved the way for abstraction?

Along with Artists such as Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, Matisse was undoubtedly part of group of trail blazers presenting collage as painting in the early 20th century, and for that I am grateful to him but I think largely, the similarities stop there. My work is concerned with the action of collage painting and I have found little to suggest that Matisse shared the same modus. Although he did talk in detail about the strength of colour relationship and proportions of form over figuration so perhaps we did share an affinity here. I did find a quote by Matisse where he says “It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else” And I can relate, except In contrast I am not bothered by it at all.

Seemingly resolute in their preoccupation with form and colour, you have indicated that while your constructed paintings, made from shapes of cut out painted paper, are physically engaged and materially driven, their context is purposefully anthropological. Perhaps you could explain this seeming dichotomy?

When describing the work in this way what I am referring to is the experience of making the work itself and how that informs the practice. In the past I have referred to this as a phenomenological study, meaning I am studying my own consciousness. For me painting functions as a psychologically exploratory activity, wherein conscious intention and decision regarding the formal aspects of the work might be or beget behaviours and artefacts upon which an intimate reading of unconscious influence may be made. Every day is an expedition of intimate and intense self-research.

Although for a number of years now, aspects of figuration and notions of race, identity and sexuality have arguably been the dominant discourse in contemporary art, there seems, particularly in Europe, to be signs of a resurgence in abstraction. Firstly, would you agree with this observation and if so tell us how and where you see your work contributing to this conversation?

Yes I agree there seems to be a resurgence in Contemporary Abstraction in Europe although I will admit that my radar is abstract centric. I’ve noticed a wave of hard edge, geometric and reductive painting.

Throughout history and particularly in indigenous culture there are stories and identities embedded in shapes, colours and patterns. My work was borne out of foraging for found material, discarded paper bags, vintage wall paper, book jackets and like. Everyday items from everyday lives. Interlaced within my practice are socio-political concerns surrounding the biosocial parameters influenced by the British class system. I tend not to harp on about it but if you look closely you will see that my process, my materials and my politics are firmly rooted in anti-classism.

To date your work has been presented in group presentations at institutions like the Royal Academy and Saatchi Gallery in London and more recently you have held solo exhibitions in Barcelona and Munich with your first museum show coming up at the Vasarely Foundation in France. Your solo exhibition in January at Barnard Cape Town, as well the inclusion of your work on their booth at the forthcoming Investec Cape Town Art Fair, represents your first engagement on the African continent. Perhaps you could share your thoughts on this and what this opportunity means to you both personally and professionally?

Because I’m not based in central London I don’t expect to gain from its resources, and I look further afield for engagement. Reaching an international audience has always been an important strategy for creating a sustainable practice and travelling with the work is one of my greatest joys. At my solo exhibition in Barcelona my exhibition text was translated into Spanish, which a visitor translated for a friend into Turkish, whom I then had a long conversation with about the concepts in English and its fascinating how different cultures offer a different lens from which to view and make sense of the ideas. I learn a lot in situations such as this. To exhibit a solo body of work and be included in an art fair presentation on the African continent is an absolute privilege, and I’m very much looking forward to hearing people’s response!

Finally, and closer to home, despite being born on the UK mainland and having studied at the Royal College of Art in London, you and your family now reside on the Isle of Wight. Does being situated close to the sea and specifically living on an island have any bearing on your work and practice?

I’ve always liked Islands. Culturally, there’s an independent identity to island communities, people are tightly knit and proud of their home. I’m most energised when I am in the natural environment. I love cities, I lived in London for many years and I enjoy travelling to foreign cities but my work has a spiritual home by the sea. It represents so much, figuratively and metaphorically. It wasn’t until I relocated back to the coast that I discovered my authentic voice in painting. I like to retreat mentally into a private space when I’m making work and living on an island is the physical representation of that. Logistically it has its challenges, everything has to come and go by hovercraft!

Looking Out by Jo Hummel will be on display at the Barnard Gallery from 17 January – 14 February 2023, and at the Investec Cape Town Art fair from 17 – 19 February 2023.

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Tom Cullberg’s fascination with the formal appearance of things purposefully arranged on a shelf endures in his engrossing cabinet installations presented in his latest exhibition at the Barnard titled Local Stories.

When he was seven, artist Tom Cullberg attempted to scale a bookshelf at his family home in Stockholm, Sweden. ‘It didn’t take long before the whole thing began to topple and I was under an avalanche of books,’ wrote Cullberg in 2009. ‘A literal lesson in appreciation of the weight and power of literature.’ By age 14, the bookshelf had lost its acrobatic appeal; instead, he was riveted by the ‘evocative potential’ of the books it held, objects with determined forms, colours and typographical treatments. This fascination with the formal appearance of things purposefully arranged on a shelf endures in Cullberg’s engrossing cabinet installations presented in his exhibition Local Stories.

Started in 2020, Cullberg’s cabinet installations number ten completed works. Each cabinet installation was worked on discretely, until completion, before the next was begun. Each cabinet installation is the outcome of a twofold process. The individual paintings are executed on birch plywood, which the artist sands and primes with gesso. The hard, smooth surface quality of the substrate means that paint is absorbed differently and produces a crisper image. Cullberg’s cabinet installations also contain sculpted objects, a new departure for the artist, albeit based on an old habit and love going back to his youth.

Organising follows making. “After the paintings are produced I spend weeks moving things around until the individual works settle,” says Cullberg. “I think a lot more about colour, because each element exists in relation to other paintings. Each cabinet has a special hum of colours.”

The glass-fronted shelf cabinets created by Cullberg to house his patiently constructed images and objects reiterate a familiar form in art history: the cabinet of curiosity. Whether housed in dedicated cabinets or occupying whole rooms, these spaces traditionally offered their aristocratic benefactors a way to order and display disparate organic and synthetic objects, from animal residue (horns, feathers, shells, carapaces) to paintings and busts.

Cullberg’s cabinet installations hew to a more contemporary and impressionistic tradition of cabinets created by private individuals to enshrine personal experience. And yet, Cullberg’s large displays are not wholly or singularly explicable as biographical statements. “Their meaning is not easily fixed,” Cullberg insists. “I am creating a set where things are happening. These works are about a painter looking out at the world, not inward. I am interested in how objects like books and albums can act as portals to stories, memories and associations for the viewer.” What follows is an edited transcript of a conversation that started in Cullberg’s Cape Town studio in November 2021, and was concluded by email while the artist was in Paris in January 2022.

You exhibited your first cabinet installation, Runaway, in 2020. Since then you have produced an additional nine glass-fronted shelf cabinet installations. How did you arrive at this formal presentation device? And what about it appealed, enough to prompt you to make more?

The idea for these shelves has been on the cards for years. I recently looked at a maquette I made ahead of my Stockholm exhibition at Candyland in 2013, for which I proposed making a shelf structure to display a group of 20 or so small canvasses. I ended up not producing the shelf. Woodwork is something that is close to me. I like building things. The shelves I make mimic a Japanese construction method where you don’t have to use nails; the pieces slot into each other. The shelves are easy to assemble, deconstruct, move and reassemble. It is satisfying. The glass-box frames housing the shelves further function to join the separate pieces into a unified work.

Before 2020 I had been working mainly with larger canvasses and I was curious to get back to the smaller format, and to paint on wood, a more rigid substrate than canvas. I was also keen to work more sculpturally, both dealing with the painting and the form of its display. It may be my middle age speaking, but there is something satisfying about working on a single cabinet, in completing it before moving on to the next, this in distinction to working on a set of canvasses concurrently, which I did before. Maybe I was also influenced by the times to make this work. I felt we were on the cusp of leaving an old age and about to enter a new one. On a personal level, I have entered some sort of midlife zone. This also places the work in a very specific timeframe, which also heavily informs the work – like a diary.

Most of the works in Local Stories were produced during the seesaw period of Covid-19 pandemic, with its ebbs and flows of risk and abatement, lockdown and openness. How did your experience of the pandemic inform the making and content of this body of work? Did it hinder your production fundamentally, or was it merely a temporary interruption? And, given the timespan of two years, do you see shifting moods across the series or in particular works that reflect the difficult circumstances we all found ourselves in?

I made two cabinet works before the pandemic. Already in these works there was a notion of movement in time and place established as a format for these pieces. I wanted them to be set in the here (Cape Town, South Africa) and now, but with points of departures into other times and places. Each cabinet installation took three to four months to complete. I worked on each separately, until completion, before starting the next one. This places the work in a very specific timeframe of the pandemic, which also heavily informs the work – like a diary. The pandemic period was the first time my flight route back to Sweden was cut, which was a strange feeling. On the other hand, it was the longest time of consistent studio work, which was very good. Overall, it was a very productive and focused period for work.

In speaking about this body of work, you have generically referred to the framed displays as cabinet paintings; I call them cabinet installations. Is it useful or even necessary to have a stable descriptor for this work? On one level, I would say it is – it shifts thinking away from the work as purely being composed of paintings, which it isn’t – but you may hold other views.

That is true. I would say it is necessary only in that it draws attention to the fact that the finished work is something different from its component parts. The work starts out as paintings, sculptural objects and structures, but there’s a shift that happens when they are placed on a shelf and grouped together. Relationships form and new meanings appear. A radical shift occurs when the wooden box is attached; it creates a unifying effect. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I am excited to work three-dimensionally and with wood. It is a material I haven’t brought into my work much before, even though I have worked with it prolifically on the side. I have, for instance, built a green house for my mom, also furniture, as well as toys for my children.

I only started talking about them as cabinets when making the third one. A friend pointed out similarities between my works and cabinets of curiosities. I am aware of their difficult history, although I think my cabinet installations are still very much of the realm of painting. What I like about them, particularly in the making, is that they have introduced a different relationship to my process. My studio process involves making stuff – paintings mostly, but also objects – and then curating these things on shelves, which creates a unifying space.

Can you elaborate a bit on this twofold labour of making and curating? For instance, do you mock up the cabinets and their contents in a sketch first? How exact is the process? Are there excess paintings and objects?

It’s an organic process to start with. I make the paintings I want to make at the time. They tend to be what I’m thinking about and follow associative sparks. Once finished they go up on the shelf in the studio. With my earlier book portraits I was more stuck with the initial composition. Here I can be brutal, taking things out, moving them around, until the cabinet starts to take shape. It might be the content of a painting that steers off from the theme of the cabinet that prompts this, or a colour that clashes. I move and replace over and over for several weeks until it all syncs. Sometimes it is only at this curating stage that I understand what the overall work is about. Not unlike Sudoku, each cabinet has to work horizontally, vertically and diagonally. I find that it involves an obvious yes, and an obvious no. It’s very exact, but often, I guess, subjectively so.

Has the process of curating your individual paintings for these cabinet installations changed your understanding and approach to painting?

It gives me more freedom to paint whatever I want. I can take on a new “style” or include subjects that on their own wouldn’t make sense but in the context of the cabinet do. The paintings and sculptural pieces also become objects. While they are obviously still very much paintings and live in the changeable sphere of painting, they somehow achieve distance from themselves. I enjoy this tension.

You spend a lot of time on creating colour harmonies and relational logics between the discrete elements in each cabinet installation. As you said earlier, the process of curating often reveals to you what the work is about as a unified object. Does each cabinet installation have a guiding narrative or logic, or can the viewer make what they will of the juxtaposed objects? How important is it to you that the viewer knows and understands your motive or intention in each painting?

Each cabinet is a story. It is specific and detailed, with a narrative or a theme but also open. The beauty of it is that they can be read in an instant, and you will get a feeling perhaps spark your own associations; you can look closer and think about the connections. I think they have this quality because they have this guiding logic.

I think it is important for the viewer to know that they have been constructed to carry connections and meaning. The viewer can make up her own stories if she wants to, of course, but, more and more, I want to communicate something quite specific. All the information is there, I think enough of my motives and intentions will be revealed for anyone who takes the time to look.

Are the individual titles important in negotiating the individual works?

Yes, the titles are a guide to what the works are about. They are usually borrowed from books and music. I think I’m allowed to do that. The titles take on new meanings and direct the work. I’m not the collecting type, but the cabinet works like a collection of things to describe the present time, a feeling, events and links to the past.

Given the large number of musical references, a possibly obvious question. Do you listen to music while painting? Do you listen to LPs, which is a very deliberate way of listening, or do you allow yourself to be served music by a digital streaming service?

I do listen to music, as well as podcasts and a lot of Swedish radio programmes when I paint. There is a definite dialogue between what I listen to and what I make. I have a record player at home but I hardly ever use it. I do not have a good and extensive vinyl collection. Streaming is fantastic to be able to freely and instantly dip into a whole world of different music. While I am a devoted convert to the digital, I miss the physical object that once accompanied music, a thing to hold and feel. It’s funny that this tactility is described in paint rather than material, with my wooden cassette tapes and records. The painting fills that gap.

The books and LPs in your work often have a personal significance. For example, your father bought you a copy of David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972), a rendering of which appears in Runaway (2021), during a visit to London when you were a teenager living in Sweden. Beyond the personal significance of particular works of literature and music in your cabinet installations, what meaning or feeling do you hope to convey in your frequently modified and wilfully transformed representations of well-known books and much-loved musical albums?

On one level, it’s about my experience of the books and music: the associations and memories they bring. But it also forms part of the story within a cabinet piece; it is a building block and forms part of a greater story. Painting takes time; it creates a bond between you and the subject. Reading a really good book absorbs you in a similar way. The making of a painting of an album or a book cover is an intimate process. It involves scrutinising every millimetre, appreciating the design, translating it by applying paint and thought. I hope that this labour translates into something that conveys meaning, and the meaning can be open. My references draw from the collective imagery of popular culture. Each cabinet installation is an invitation to collaborate, a search for common ground with the viewer. The relationship is visual but also psychological. These cabinet installations definitely involve finding equilibrium between work and pleasure. One of these pleasures is seeing or recognising that a real book will accept my made up one. Similarly painting non-music imagery the size and square format of an LP, complete with record label logos, enables the image to enter that world. Especially in my work Conspiracy I use the label logos as components to the “story”.

Let’s look more closely at Conspiracy. As in your other cabinet installations, it juxtaposes abstract and figural compositions. This is a hallmark of your output as a painter. Was it your intention to bring these two modes of painting into a more intimate conversation in the cabinet installations?

I feel that the two modes have almost merged in my Local Stories series. The panels start as an abstract field of colour and or shapes and different levels of figuration is added on from something that is just words to all over imagery. The purely abstract pieces create breathing space, silence between the sometimes very talkative figurative pieces, but also function to carry a mood, a psychological attitude. Conspiracy gets it title from the album-sized panel featuring a group of men paddling down a river after an image from one of those picture encyclopaedias on 1980s South Africa. There is also a billboard of some river rafters advertising “Rapid Rivers” and “the last trip”. This work is partly about me getting acquainted with a time before I settled in South Africa, through imagery that is latent and psychologically open.

Conspiracy features images of urban and rural architecture. The buildings are recognisably of the Cape, your home of almost three decades. Can you speak about the process of painting buildings and infrastructure? It is something that has occupied you for a long time.

Buildings are interesting to paint. They carry traces of past lives. They have history. They may have been a home or a place of work. Sometimes this order changes. The modernist tower with a BP logo at its top in Gimme Some Truth (2021) was originally conceived as an office block, known as BP Centre, but is now in the process of being transformed into urban loft apartments.

Conspiracy includes four depictions of buildings from Woodstock, the neighbourhood where your studio is located. What interested you in depicting the suburb’s late Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian period architecture?

As a painter I’m drawn to Woodstock’s varied and colourful architecture. The neighbourhood has lots of visible scars. It is ever changing, seemingly caught between decay and change, light and shadow.

In certain respects, Local Stories is your most identifiably South African work to date. The iconography is of South Africa. It is not just the architecture that prompts me say this, but things like your painting of an airplane pulling the banner for strip club Mavericks in your installation Runaway (2021). This is not to say you were avoiding South Africa in previous work, but it strikes me that your juxtaposition of disparate images – some speaking to things outside your window, others to memories from your youth in Sweden – visualise your hybrid identity. Has working on the series made you feel more at home than before, or, conversely, less so?

A simple answer, but not without weight: I think this series is an expression of feeling at home here.

The authority of white artists to portray black subjects has increasingly come under challenge globally. I think of the controversy around Dana Schutz’s work Open Casket (2016), which depicted murdered teenager Emmett Till, or the anger directed at Anton Kannemeyer for his stylised portrayals of black subjects that reference Georges ‘Hergé’ Remi’s Tintin character. Black figures have increasingly featured in your work since 2016. How, if at all, have the ethical debates around identity and authorship influenced your work?

I paint people from the world around me, be it figures from our public culture and common history, or from what I see and relate to in the everyday. I am obviously aware of the debates around representation. I feel that my work is respectful and un-speculative and hope other people will have that experience of my work.

Let’s look at another work. Runaway (2021) includes a copy of Gerhard Richter’s well-known portrait of his daughter Betty (1988). Do you treat your renderings of works by artists differently to your rendering of consumer items like books and LPs?

My painting of Richter’s Betty gives it the appearance of a book. This was intentional. I want it to have the flatness of a photographic reproduction of a painting, tapping into his oeuvre. I like that the work depicts his daughter. My daughter sometimes comes to the studio. It was with her that I started building the predecessors to the structures and buildings that appear in the cabinets.

I want to turn to Open City, which takes its title from Teju Cole’s celebrated novel of the same name. This cabinet installation was produced during and after the first hard lockdown (March to May 2020). This work could easily have been titled The Secret History, after the 1992 novel by Donna Tartt, which along with Cole’s novel also makes a cameo in this particular painting.

Yes, it absolutely could. The Tartt novel is there, along with the runners, wrestlers and portrait of English post-punk band Echo and the Bunnymen, because it speaks of the psychology within a small group of clubbish or clannish people in a particular setting or place, the togetherness and apartness that can be felt in such circumstances. During the first strict health lockdown this experience of community was unavailable to most of us. We could only hang out with the people we lived with. ‘Open City’ felt more informative and useful in describing my experience of that particular moment. Julius, a flâneur who wanders his adopted home of Manhattan, narrates the novel. The title gestures to what an open and closed city might be. During the lockdown, my son and I would walk the empty streets with empty shopping bags under the pretence that we were on our way to buy groceries, one of the few outside activities allowed. It was a mind-blowingly different way of experiencing the city and raised thoughts of the boundaries between personal and shared public space. It also prompted reflections on restricted movement in non-pandemic times, especially in a society like South Africa.

Tom Cullberg: Local Stories opens on 15 March and runs until 26 April at the Barnard in Cape Town. A limited edition publication of the project has also been launched and will be available for purchase during the exhibition. For more information, visit barnardgallery.com

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