Susan Greenspan & Hentie van der Merwe

     

This is the first time that long-time friends and fellow artists Susan Greenspan and Hentie van der Merwe are exhibiting together. Their decision to make a joint exhibition springs from their longstanding shared interest in photography and the conceptual use thereof in their respective artmaking practices.

Greenspan will be showing archival inkjet prints, which are the latest in her series of photographs and sculptures titled, Photographic Graphic. In 2010, Greenspan began creating work based on the marks made while digitally retouching her family's damaged photographs. The new work transforms these same marks into elaborate geometrical compositions which evoke an aura of the people in the original portraits, without revealing any external details.  The results are iridescent, gem-like orbs that hover on the page.

This is the first time Van der Merwe will be showing new work after taking a five-year break from exhibiting to devote himself to starting, and growing, together with partner Frits van Ryneveld, the by now well-known Darling Sweet brand of toffees and caramels. In the works Van der Merwe will be exhibiting he returned to themes and artmaking techniques by now familiar to his work; archival photographs of the Namibian landscape of his youth, combined with autobiographical references, layering, stitching and embroidery, and text. For these works the artist has, as is often the case in his work, made use of a photographic archive as source material, and here he worked with a collection of digital trail camera images made in Namibia for wildlife surveillance.