Wow! DKW at the end of 2007!
2007 has been an amazing and inspiring year for us working with fantastic people on a number of exciting collaborative ventures. We have collaborated and created works with William Kentridge, Bruce Backhouse, Deborah Bell, Wilma Cruise, Johan Engels, Robert Whitehead, Colbert Mashile, Andrzej Nowicki, Stompie Selibe, Cyril Coetzee, Ellen [...]

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Paul Stopforth left South Africa during troubled times in the 1980s and moved to Boston where he taught fine art at Harvard University until his retirement earlier this year. Over the years he has held solo exhibitions in the US but he admits that the response to a recent exhibition was less satisfying than he had hoped. In 2003 he held a solo exhibition at our New York space, David Krut Projects, that dealt with everyday objects found on Robben Island. His drawings of loud speakers, trash cans, bars of soap, blankets and boundary walls seemed ordinary but flowed out of the highly politicised reality surrounding Robben Island and did not seem to resonate with American audiences. He also worked on a series of lithographs on the same subject, each image including a variety of different textures in the background.

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Engels and Whitehead were invited into the studio in early 2006 for an introduction to etching. Since we knew that both were from creative backgrounds in set design and acting, we highly anticipated the outcome and have not been disappointed. Johan began a series of etchings that draw inspiration from a project on the TRC that he has been working on during his recent visits to SA, and Robert playfully explored layered mark making for portraiture. During Johan’s last visit to JHB, a new idea about collaboration began to emerge, though we are all still slightly baffled as to how it will evolve, and the two artists are not doing anything to allay our curiosity other than to drop hints of ideas and murmurs of mayhem.

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Recently DKW introduced a weekend etching course to our resumé. The course is held over three consecutive Sundays and allows for the creation and printing of two copper plate etchings. The course has proven highly successful in many ways, one of which has been the introduction of new artists and ideas to the studio.

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My last DKW update featured my ongoing collaboration with Nathaniel Stern. His project began in March 2006 and came to an end in late October, the day before he left for a two-year period of study in Ireland. During our eight month collaboration we resolved a new body of work that culminated in 19 limited editions that explored every medium known to DKW. Aquatints, line etching, hand engraving, carborundum, polyester plate lithography, monotypes, chine collé, and combinations of all of the above, were explored to their fullest extent. We also pushed boundaries in our use of colour and the creation of new textures. Nathaniel is a digital and interactive artist primarily and has been realizing a new body of works on paper through digital printing that we have been manipulating and translating into traditional printmaking form.

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I just realized that my last post was the 31st of July. It seems that the last few months have run away with me entirely and so much has happened in the studio. I am slowly finding my way back onto the computer and am not so deep in the throes of editioning. This period of absence from the computer proved to be highly eventful and very inspiring in the studio and I apologise for the silence on my part. Regular updates are resuming, finally.

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    So…..
Nathaniel Stern walked into DKW in March, about five months ago, and things haven’t quite been the same for us. Bursting with energy and excited at the new-found potential of the printmaking medium, he set to work on a grande project.

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The last few weeks in the studio were spent developing and editioning a new body of work with Sean Slemon. When Sean said he would be coming home for a short visit after completing his first year of his Masters Degree at the Pratt Institute in New York, we immediately set up time for him to work at DKW.

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David Koloane was in to continue work on monotypes created on his last visit to the studio.

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Alastair Whitton was also working in the studio last week, though his work could not be more different to David’s. Alastair is from Cape Town and he and I have been in regular contact since the latter part of last year. Alastair works in a very minimilist way, creating textures and patterns through line work and the re-working of images.

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