Garth Erasmus
Garth Erasmus comes from rural roots in the Eastern Cape . He studied Fine Arts at Rhodes University (1978-80) before moving to Cape Town . He taught art from 1982-1997 before becoming a full-time artist. Erasmus is well represented in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art, Washington DC.
Garth Erasmus is a visual artist and musician. Originally from the Eastern Cape, Garth taught himself to paint at the age of 21 and later studied art at Rhodes in Grahamstown. He moved to CT in the 80s and was an integral part of the politically-inclined Vakalisa Artists group on the Cape Flats. He was also an organizer of the Thupelo Artists Workshop. In the democratic era his work has shifted in emphasis toward a more personal approach in the exploration of issues of identity. In the group Khoi Khonnexion Garth is a musician playing self-made instruments.
An important part of this process was his discovery of "the music of indigenous cultures". This led him to invent instruments: "the music that I make is the same as the paintings that I make... they're coming from the same source, the same spiritual and emotional place... I want to work towards bringing all of them together." Although there have been changes in his person and in his art, Erasmus still sees himself as more of a cultural worker than an artist, with concerns about education and healing prominent in his thinking. "We all know that serious healing must happen, but for me there's just no imaginative way of going about this healing... I've become sensitized in my own personal life to what that healing means, and what that healing is, and I've decided to put that in practice in my own way in my work."
Kadiatou (Chou-chou) Diallo
Kadiatou Diallo is a Cape Town based artist/ educator/ catalyst with a MA in educational psychology (Universities of Maastricht, NL and Stellenbosch, RSA) and a diploma in Fine Arts (Ruth Prowse School of Art, Cape Town).She has worked as a researcher, curriculum developer and evaluator in the NGO sector (adult education and community healthcare) with the Adult Learning Network. She has developed and facilitated a wide range of creativity workshops, using applied arts and culture as tools for processes in other areas and disciplines (for universities, conferences, NGOs and youth groups). Kadiatou serves on the executive committee of the Association of Visual Arts and on the Board of Greatmore Art Studios. She is co-founder of the Cape Town based initiative, Kwa, a physical and conceptual space for imaginations.
Since 2005, Kadiatou is a consultant for the Africa Centre: In 2005-2006, she facilitated a youth leadership programme, bringing together high school learners from historically segregated schools in the Stellenbosch area. In 2007, she managed the Africa Centre's first international gathering of multi-disciplinary art practitioners, entitled En/Tangled Nations. She was the project manager for the inaugural Spier Contemporary 2007, a biennial national visual arts exhibition and awards series.
With Dominique Malaquais, she directs SPARCK - Space for Pan-African Research and Knowledge - a network-driven, multi-disciplinary and multi-sited programme in Africa and its Diasporas.
Gary Frier
Born 15 October 1972 and later educated as a Graphic Designer at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Gary has moved to create art of a more personal nature.
In a continued effort to encourage interest in art among the broader public Gary has exhibited at NGO's and cultural institutions
such as the Alliance Franciase, ITECED (Institute of Training and Education for Capacity Building) library in East London and the Artscape Resource centre.
He has contribute to art auction "Starfish Dinner of Hope" hosted at The Vineyard Hotel, Newlands as well as MyLifE's South African Art Auction on the 11th of April on at U.C.T. Michaelis School of Fine Art in support of the youth development work of the MylifE Project. As well as creating a work for Peninsula feeding scheme charity auction at 34 on Long.His work will also be used as a video installation for Return the musical at Edgemar Center for the Arts in Santa Monica in the U.S.A.
Most recently at exhibited at the Spanish ambassadors residence.
He has exhibited at Greatmore Studios, Idasa (Institute For Democracy in South Africa ) and Durbanville Cultural Society,Battswood Art Centre, Cape Gallery, AVA(Association of Visual Arts) gallery, Caledon Museum, Fordsburg Art Studios (Bagfactory), Institute of Training and Education for Capacity Building (ITECED) library, Alliance Francaise de Mitchell's Plain,Alliance Francaise du Cap in Cape Town, Klein Karoo National Arts Festival (KKNK) and the Artscape resource centre.
His work can be found in these corporate collections: Peuple et Culture - Brest (France) BP South Africa (Cape Town) Joop van den Ende Theater productions - Holland Embassy of USA, Nairobi Western Cape Department of Economic development. As well as private collections world wide.
Janet Ranson
She has participated in Thupelo Workshops for artists and educators (at Kirstenbosch, SANG, Greatmore Studios and Goedgedacht, Malmesbury) since 1997. She co-facilitated an educators' conference, DIALOGUE, for the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in 2001 and wrote a series of Arts and Culture books for Juta.
She has held solo shows of painting in Cornwall and Cape town: at Greatmore Studios, 34 Special, Gerard Cloete and Alliance Francaise, and participated in numerous group exhibitions.
She enjoys the tension of opposing approaches: visual and verbal, academic and commercial, public and private, art and craft. She believes that teamwork is the natural mode for humanity, that teams should integrate and build on diversity, and that our society can be transformed through human creativity.
Velile Soha
Velile Soha developed an interest in art at a very young age. Encouraged to pursue his talent as an adult, he attended C.A.P. and went on to study at Rorke's Drift Art School in Kwa Zulu Natal. The school was founded by the Swedish Missionaries and this was the principal facility for the black artists in South Africa.
Soha's experiences have continued to inspire him in his artistic pursuits. He returned to Cape Town in 1984 to teach young artists at the Nyanga Art Centre and C.A.P. for several years before devoting himself full time to his art career.
He has participated in several Thupela workshops and he is a current artist in Residence at Greatmore Studios in Cape Town. His work has been featured in many solo and group exhibitions across South Africa and in Namibia, Germany, United Kingdom, Argentina, U.S.A., Holland, Sweden and Canada. He has worked on mural projects and received many commissions for book illustrations.
Jill Trappler
Jill Trappler was born in Benoni in 1957 in the Gauteng Province. She completed her tertiary training with Bill Ainslie at the Johannesburg Art Foundation and completed three years of a fine arts degree through UNISA.
She experimented with ceramic and craftwork and also discovered her true medium when she went into weaving with Marguerite Weavind, Mooi River textile factory and the Adult Institute, Islington in London.
She is an artist who consistently explores different modes of non-representational art in a variety of media. Her work is rarely literal; she works with poetry, music, metaphor and with associations that emerge years after the visual stimulus is registered.
She initiated the weaving employment project at Philani Nutrition Clinics, Crossroads and Khayelitsha, including design, drawing and colour workshops, story writing and spinning and knitting. She combined this with lecturing part-time at the University of Cape Town and various studios, including a teaching program at the South African National gallery in Cape Town.
In 2009 Trappler decided to prioritise studio work for the first time in thirty years. Although she has participated in many group and solo shows, her presence and contribution have to some extent been over-shadowed by her far-reaching involvement in teaching, mentoring and project work. As an active participant in the Thupelo Workshop from its inception, a founder member of the Greatmore Studios in Cape Town, a Board member of the Fordsburg Artists' Studios (the Bag Factory) in Johannesburg, and Chair person for a few years of the Association for Visual Arts, to mention but a few of her activities, Trappler has participated rigorously in art and craft projects in South Africa and further afield.
Jill has exhibited locally and internationally (South Africa, Germany, New York, France, Australia, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Uganda, Korea, United Kingdom, United State of America and Wales) since 1990, and has won a variety of awards including the Provincial award from Western Cape arts and Culture for contribution to visual arts. Her work is well represented in South African and international collections.
Lionel Davis
Lionel Davis was born in District Six in 1936, and spent all of his childhood in the neighborhood. District Six was primarily home to colored (mixed race) South Africans, but many black and Indian families lived there as well. The neighborhood tended to break down racial barriers in an otherwise highly color-conscious society.
Davis took his first formal art classes with CAP, and continued his art education with the organization for two full years. He then spent another two years at the Evangelical Arts and Crafts Center at Rorke's Drift in Natal. At Rorke's Drift, Davis was introduced to the medium of screen printing, which is used to produce artwork on t-shirts and posters. Davis realized that this medium had great potential to affect widespread social change, and he pursued it wholeheartedly with the intention of teaching the discipline to others. Davis's two years at Rorke's Drift gave him a degree in Fine Arts, and qualified him to return to the the Community Arts Project in Cape Town as a teacher.
Davis taught at CAP through the tumultuous 1980's, as harsh government crackdowns became more frequent and South Africa became increasingly isolated in the world. As a screen printing instructor, he assisted a variety of individuals and organizations who opposed apartheid. South African law made it dangerous for his students to print posters and t-shirts with overtly revolutionary messages, but their artwork aided the resistance movement in more subtle ways. Davis's students produced everything from posters protesting high rents to t-shirts urging white South Africans to resist army conscription.
Davis is particularly proud of the fact that CAP remained autonomous throughout the decade, resisting the temptation to align itself with any particular political organization. This allowed Davis and his fellow instructors to assist everyone who sought to oppose apartheid, and in so doing, do their part to encourage all South Africans to bind together in a united front against their government.
Davis is also proud of the degree to which his work as an art instructor empowered his students. Education is certainly a subtle form of resistance, but in the long run, it is perhaps the most potent means of bringing about positive societal change. Almost all of Davis's students perceived art as a domain that belonged only to whites, and their education with CAP thus helped to break down barriers in their own minds. Art education also gave Davis's students a rare chance to pursue full self-expression.
Apartheid's official Bantu Education curriculum stressed wrote memorization and strove to dehumanize its black pupils to the greatest possible extent. Generations of black children had creativity and free thought drilled out of them as they passed through South Africa's schools. Through drawing and painting, many of Davis's students were able freely think and create for the first time in years. Often, this opportunity set Davis's students on the road to attaining a much stronger and more profound sense of self.
"Through the medium of art," Davis explains, "you can begin to dignify a person."
Ndikhumbule Ngqinambi
I commenced school at Ngubesizwe Primary school in the former Transkei in 1982. In my early schooling (Sub-B) I started drawing, but not seriously. I drew on my school books till my class teacher beat me, after which I stopped.
I returned to Cape Town to continue my schooling. There was no art subject, but in Grade 7 an artist held a workshop at the school and taught us how to paint and draw. Thereafter my art started showing direction.
In 2000, I studied the foundation course in Visual Arts at CAP consisting of Visual Arts, Drawing, Ceramics, Printing, Painting, Visual studies (theory). I took part in the Community Arts Workshop facilitated by Robert Robson and resulted in exhibition themed "Question of Identity" took place at the South African National Gallery - Annex.
Dathini Mzayiya
Dathini was born in 1979 in the Eastern Cape. He attended the former Community Arts Project (CAP) afterwhich he enrolled for an advertising and marketingdegree at the Advertising College of South Africain 1999. He then went onto study graphic design atthe former Peninsula Technikon in 2000 as well as abusiness diploma at the Scalabrini Centre in 2004.
Dathini has exhibited in numerous art exhibitions andmural projects in various countries around the world,including Germany, Ethiopia and Austria as well asexhibiting locally in Johannesburg and Cape Town.He continues to participate in community projects,workshops, and residencies both locally and abroad.Dathini also received a Youth Veteran Award from theKhayelitsha Development Forum and continues to workin his own space at the Greatmore Street Studios.
Wonder Marthinus
Wonder Marthinus was born in Knysna, lives and works in Cape Town. And has shown extensively in South Africa as well as in Germany. He has had four solo exhibitions in South Africa, and one abroad. Marthinus had been an artist-in-residence at Greatmore Studios for five years, and currently works from the Bijou Art Studios in Observatory, Cape Town.
His paintings developes from actual images of places which he has visited. These images could be drawings, photographs or images stored in his memory. These visuals are combined and manipulated to map out his own personal stories.
