/ Current Exhibitions

North Gallery

Elisca du Toit
Bittersweet – A celebration of life

14 September to 5 October 2024

“In this body of work I delve into the profound experiences of living a bittersweet life. To me bittersweet represents the awareness that joy and pain; light and shade are eternally intertwined. It also embodies an intense longing for a more perfect and beautiful world. This reflects a yearning for the less visible aspects of life - a search for a realm of the unseen and time.

“I use architectural elements as symbols to explore hidden meanings and emotions. For example windows and doorways represent transitions from one state of being to another, akin to the movement through various stages of life such as the journey from childhood to adulthood. The repetition of these ubiquitous elements enhances the underlying enigmatic atmosphere of the work, creating a facade of perfect order. By using repetition and patterns, I aim to achieve visual impact and a distinct identity. My potent memories of experiences from years of traveling also inform and enrich this exploration.

“In this latest body of work, I draw on recent travel experiences in Namibia, Venice, Florence, Perugia, and Amsterdam. I have vivid memories of walking the streets of these cities, experiencing an electrifying awareness that blended joy and sadness with a poignant awareness of the passage of time. This profound sense of beauty and longing serves as the key to unlocking an ultimate state of beauty, joy, and sadness - the essence of a bittersweet life.”

Main Gallery

Stalhuis Sculpture Studio exhibition
31 August to 21 September 2024

A very unusual exhibition from Amalie von Maltitz’s Stalhuis Sculpture Studio will be opened by Wilhelm van Rensburg, Senior Art Specialist and Head Art Curator at Strauss & Co on Saturday, 31 August 2024 at 11:00.

Von Maltitz states: “The first students arrived 20 years ago to learn how to use clay for making sculptures. I devised a programme of exercises to train the perception of three-dimensional forms. Clay as primordial material is ideal for shaping forms that employ all the basics of sculpture such as mass, space, receding and bulging surfaces, textures or opposite edges varied as sharp or rounded finishes. With this basis of training students can venture into portraits or abstracted figures.

“The basic construction technique is building with coils which are free from the need of complex metal frames. Once thoroughly dried, the sculptures are fired twice in an electric kiln with the application of oxides or glazes. Owing to the free choice of subject matter, this is also a valuable training experience for me to develop methods of handling varied structures within the clay shape.

“Three years ago a fire between the kilns was extinguished in time to prevent total destruction. However, it delivered a mass of fascinating forms and textures. These were an inspiration to me to be assembled in varied compositions called the fire-works.”

Participating artists are Michéle Deeks, Ilona Klein, Lauren Koertzen, Gill Murray, Rina Noto, Michelle van der Wiel, Rudi van Rensburg, Louise Viljoen, Karen von Geyso, Rudi van Rensburg and Amalie von Maltitz.

This exhibition might never be seen as a collection again, so ensure that you pay a visit at the Association of Arts Pretoria.

Gallery Chaton

Robinne Renkin
Fractured Portraits

12 October to 2 November 2024

Robinne Renkin, a Pretoria based artist, combines a sharp interest in the deconstruction of form, dissecting line-by-line, and seeking the authentic form by the reconstruction of what makes up the whole, with an analytical fascination.

The medium of exploration is black ink and ballpoint pens, stripping the work of color and creating high-contrast expressive images.

Robinne makes use of mathematical instruments that examine the fragile proportions of faces and bodies and how every part fits together, but that also underlines the brokenness of human nature that can never fully be measured.

Living with a degenerative, connective tissue disorder that fractures and embeds itself in the body, sparked Robinne’s curiosity in the continuous cycle of the deconstruction and reconstruction that happens over a period of time to all matter. Everything is a sum of its different parts - and everything is history and future.

This condition also lends itself to modern fixes that are mechanical and harsh in many ways and becomes merged with the bodies past and present. These past and future elements are captured in Robinne’s pieces along with illustrated ideas of how symptoms of pain and disruption are experienced.

The portraits featured in this collection are a deconstruction of real faces, interrogated to find their true connections even within fragmentation.

“I appeal to a sense of form, where I use naturalistic form I have stripped it of all irrelevant matter…
My object is the construction of Pure Form.”
- David Bomberg, 1914