No Dream Too Far

In this online exclusive curated project, we are presenting five very different artists whose practices transgress constraints of representation. Using very different approaches from collage to stitching and stencilling as well as painting and drawing, all five take us into spaces of possibility and plasticity where reality is bent to the will of the mind. Not reducible to and not wanting to be reduced to literal interpretation, each artist shares with us visions built at the precipice of conscious thought and imagination.

In Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude almost Freudian symbolism, wings merge with limbs on headless bodies, giant chess pieces tumble to the ground. In Mavis Tauzeni’s delicately layered almost but not quite tapestries, faces and figures oscillate with butterflies in mythical landscapes which are shaped by sentiment and thought rather than geography. Richard Butler Bowdon’s meta portraits and collages echo dreams we’ve all had in which people we know including ourselves assume new personas and interiors merge with the infinity of space and history. Pebofatso Mokoena takes us on flights into a cosmos of his own creation, where aesthetics become the foundation of the laws of physics and poetry.

These visions give us the gift of personal freedom to realise in our own unique ways – the most precious gift art can bestow.

Valerie Kabov
Curator