Cape Town has a booming number of young, talented artists. With First Thursdays back in full swing, you may be able to check some of their work out at the city’s wide array of galleries.
Here are some talented Capetonian artists to keep an eye on:
Talia Ramkilawan:
This artist was born in Cape Town and raised in Nelspruit before making her way back to the Mother City in 2015. She majored in sculpture at the Michaelis School of Art.
“Ramkilawan’s work aims to address her own lived experience with South Asian identity, culture and trauma. She uses mixed media in order to visualise the complexity of one’s relationship to trauma using various mediums including tapestry, video, performance and installation,” a Smith Gallery index reads in the artist. “The discovery of rug-hooking in her fourth year of university was a breakthrough moment. She immersed herself in this craft and through this medium she was able to create an intimacy and honesty that felt refreshing.”
Ramkilawan adapted the technique using a crochet needle, wool and by stretching hessian over a wooden frame, and thus found her medium.
Website: https://www.artsy.net/artist/talia-ramkilawan
Swain Hoogervorst:
Hoogervorst studied Design and Advertising at the Vega School of Brand Communications in Cape Town (2010) before starting painting at the end of 2010.
According to his official site, his debut exhibition was in 2012 at Salon 91 in Cape Town, and shortly after he participated in Schildersweek, a one-week painting residency in Domburg in the Netherlands.
In 2014 his solo exhibition Inside Out opened at the AVA Gallery in Cape Town. Hoogervorst is currently working towards exhibiting in London and expanding his presence to an international market. He is represented by the Everard Read Galleries in both South Africa and London.
Website: http://www.swainhoogervorst.com
Githan Coopoo:
Coopoo is a self-taught ceramicist and ceramic jewelry maker based in Cape Town.
Coopoo’s work stems from a place of catharsis and exploration, and believes that “clay is the queer agenda”. Their work started as a way to manage the scale of things breaking – people, emotions, physical things – by practicing on clay and on a smaller scale before applying those skills to picking up the pieces when things break in the physical world.
The artist and the above-mentioned Ramkilawan also form part of a collective of South-East Asian artists called the Kutti Collective, where they’ve created a supportive community to share their work and uplift one another.
Website: https://www.instagram.com/githancoopoo/?hl=en
Gum is one of Cape Town’s more well-known conceptual photographers, and first gained popularity when she began posting selfies on Instagram in a bid to find her creative voice. At the time, she was a second year film student at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology.
Her primary focuses lay in producing a new prism through which to view African contemporary art, fashion and culture.
Website: http://tonygum.blogspot.com
Picture: Pixabay