/ Exhibitions

North Gallery

Elisca du Toit - Collected Places (Patterns and place - notes from the UK) 12 September to 3 October 2026

Elisca du Toit’s exhibition, Collected Places will open on Saturday 12 September at the Association of Arts Pretoria at 11:00. A subtitle for the exhibit is Pattern and Place - Notes from the UK.

This body of work comes from Elisca’s travelling and looking closely and is mainly inspired by a recent visit to the UK, especially Chelsea, London, Newbury and Highclere Castle in Hampshire. While travelling, she observed and sketched details that caught her attention such as doors, archways, pillars, windows, shutters, staircases etc. She then used the drawings and photographs as reference in her work.

She says that she was also influenced by visits to classic English design Houses such as HOWE, Colefax and Fowler. Her work explores how a patterned border or decorated plate can hold a memory of a place. She also employs plates, because a plate itself holds memories. In English Interiors decorative plates are collected and displayed like art. The circular border creates perfect order and allows a place to be contained and cherished.

Main Gallery

The Glass Safari Exhibition

25 July to 15 August 2026

The Glass Safari 2026 exhibition exhibition brings together works that trace the breadth of contemporary glass art in Southern Africa and beyond: pieces by leading South African glass artists, works by the international artists who joined Glass Safari 2026, and new work created during the Biennale’s three project weeks in Pretoria and at Ngwenya in eSwatini. A collective display of Graal works, a glass-jewellery showcase curated by Melanie Dawson and a presentation of student work completes the show.

South Africa’s leading glass artists are all exhibiting. A highlight of the exhibition is a collective display of Graal works created during Smelt Sessions with David Reade. Graal is an intricate, multi-stage glassblowing technique and these collaborative pieces represent the hands of artists, makers and students working side-by-side.

This exhibition brings three generations of glass into one room — the past, in the work of David Reade, a pioneer of South African studio glass; the present in today’s practising artists and lecturers; and the future in student work shown publicly for the first time.

The exhibition is curated by Caitlin Greenberg, Lothar Böttcher, Martli Jansen van Rensburg and Melanie Dawson.

Gallery Chaton

Stephanie D Olivier - Whatever 12 September to 3 October 2026

Collage artist Stephanie D Olivier who turned 80 in April this year celebrates her life with an exhibition entitled Whatever! at the Association of Arts Pretoria. She says that collage captivates her with its freedom and unpredictability. Playful yet sometimes dark, it transforms scraps of books and magazines into unexpected meaning. By cutting and reassembling printed media, she reclaims what once shaped her life in a world now dominated by technology. Chaos is her starting point. In a fractured and turbulent world, her response is simple: Whatever!

Residing in Pretoria, the artist is a self-taught collage artist whose creative journey began later in life after a career in IT spanning forty-five years. Though her early education and professional training were unrelated to art, she discovered collage as a hobby twenty-five years ago, and it has since become her passion. She has been a student with Johan Conradie for nearly 20 years, after doing some short courses in drawing, painting and Photoshop at Unisa. Her career afforded her extensive travel opportunities, and she has attended four Venice Biennales, enriching her artistic perspective. Stephanie has participated in various exhibitions, and her works are held in private collections both in South Africa and abroad. Now retired, she embraces her role as a late-blooming artist, aspiring to be the “Grandma Moses of collage,” with the latter as her chosen medium and forté.