In Episodes of the Whole, Gillian Rosselli presents a deeply atmospheric body of work that explores individual consciousness as both part and product of a greater existential totality.
It marks an expansive and contemplative turn — drawing on themes of birth and rebirth through recurring nest-like forms, and aligning her practice with a broader journey of transformation through evocative references to Homer’s Odyssey.
As Ashraf Jamal writes,” ‘After everything is left in pieces,’ this is where Episodes of the Whole begins—not with coherence, but with fragments. In this body of work, Gillian Rosselli returns to painting as a practice of assembling rather than resolving, layering colour, gesture, and emotion to explore what it means to be in the world when the world feels undone. Her work does not seek to represent; it attends instead to sensation, to perception as atmosphere, and to feeling as material. As Sara Ahmed suggests, emotions do not reside in subjects or objects but move between them, shaping the surfaces of bodies and the spaces they inhabit (Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 2004).
Rosselli’s surfaces pulse with this movement—at once intimate and collective, abstract and elemental. It is this split focus – between the primal and contemporary – that informs the artist. Rosselli creates ‘episodic open narratives.’ Her stories are inferred. While she exchanges ‘perspective for atmosphere,’Rosselli recognises that ‘perception is the challenging variable in both.’ What matters is an ‘atmospheric quality’ and ‘energy’– the ‘raw pureness of nature’, as well as ‘the chaos and tension that permeates contemporaneity’– a radioactive silence consumed by ‘the remnants of conflict.”
Gillian Rosselli
Rosselli (b. 1962) obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Michaelis School of Fine Arts in Cape Town in 1984 and has since developed her complex visual language. With six solo exhibitions to date, her work is included in public and private collections worldwide, including the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Royal Embassy of the Netherlands (Harare), Cottco Zimbabwe, Anglo American and Mobil Oil. In 2024 Rosselli represented Zimbabwe at the Venice Biennale. Other noteworthy exhibitions include Five Bhobh – Painting At the End of an Era at the Zeitz MOCAA in 2018. She has won many awards throughout her career, including the overall award of distinction for painting in Zimbabwe in 1995. Parallel to her solo exhibition at THK Gallery, Rosselli’s work features in the group presentation Hunyanzvi (Mastery) at Grisebach, Zurich
WHAT: Episodes of the Whole, Gillian Rosselli
WHERE: THK Gallery, 52 Waterkant Street, Cape Town 8001
WHEN: Opening Thursday, 5 June, from 6–8pm | Gallery Hours Tues – Fri 10:00 – 18:00 Sat 10:00 – 14:00
INFO: T +27(0)76 367 6387 | E office@thkgallery.com | VISIT
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