Hanien Conradie’s new exhibition at Spier Wine Farm, Water-Verse: Traces of the Traceless (Spore van die Spoorlose), invites us to consider water not only as a resource, but as a presence: fluid, powerful, and memory-bearing.
Water is life. It flows through our bodies and the ecosystems we depend on. It nourishes plants, shapes landscapes, and sustains all living things. Without it, there can be no regeneration, no farming, no future.
Over the last decade, Conradie has engaged with rivers, droughts and floods, creating works where water is both medium and teacher.
Through paintings, performance rituals and prayers, she explores how water shapes landscapes and inner-scapes alike, asking us to reflect on our relationship with this most vital element. “This body of work is a tribute to the spirit of water,” Conradie says. “Its fluidity, its power, its memory, and its uncanny ability as a medium to express human consciousness.”
A Painterly Dialogue with Water
Working with natural pigments such as clay, soot, ash, and ochre, Conradie allows water to animate matter. “What we might call ‘paint’ could be described as a collaboration,” she says. “Water gives form to my emotions, moods and thoughts – and then disappears as it evaporates, leaving the pigment in place.”
The exhibition unfolds in a loose chronology, mapping Conradie’s work and its evolving relationship with water across time and place.
●Raaswater (2015) re-sounds the silenced Hartebees River near Worcester, where Conradie’s grandmother once farmed. Polluted and empty today, the river once roared so loudly it gave its name to the farm. By collaborating with its yellow clay, Conradie attempted to restore its lost voice.
●Of Water and Invoking (2017) arose during Cape Town’s devastating drought, when she researched Southern African rainmaking rites. Using clays from the Hartebees and Table Mountain rivers, Conradie painted waterscapes of lilies as both grief and prayer for rain.
●In Dart (2018), she inscribed Eugène Marais’s words “Diep Rivier, Donker Stroom” (“Deep River, Dark Stream”) into the current.
●In the Tankwa Karoo desert – the ‘Place of Thirst’ – she performed gestures of longing that shaped the performance Reëndans (2019–2021). Inspired by Marais’s Die Dans van die Reën, this work honours rain as spirit and shy maiden whose dance brings renewal.
●In the Flood Series (2023), Conradie uses ancestral clay alongside chalk and ochres from Botswana to embody water’s powerful ability to transform familiar landscapes beyond recognition. She also reflects on the meaning of these global floods, wondering if there are messages from the planet we should be listening to.
●In the film Watervers (2025), Conradie walks backwards into water and disappears in an immersion that considers water from below the surface, contemplating initiation and transformation.
Why This Exhibition Matters
At a time when droughts, floods, and ecological crises are shaping our shared future, Water-Verse offers a deeply personal yet universal meditation on our relationship with the natural world. It reminds us that water is not only a necessity but a presence; not only a backdrop but companion.
The choice of venue is fitting. What may appear to be tranquil water lily ponds at Spier are in fact part of a living water recycling system, where 100% of the farm’s wastewater is cleaned and returned to the land. This approach to water mirrors Conradie’s practice: attentive, regenerative, and rooted in respect.
- During the first month of the exhibition, Conradie will create a site-specific painting in the gallery space using local ochres and water from Spier’s ponds. Visitors will be able to observe her process, gaining insight into both her practice and the life-giving work of water stewardship.
Water-Verse is an invitation to slow down and listen: to rivers, rain, floods, silence – and to the traces that water leaves in us. Whether through Conradie’s clay paintings, her ritual performances, or her meditative inks, the exhibition asks us to feel water as more than backdrop. It asks us to recognise it as spirit, teacher, and mirror of our own consciousness.
By visiting Water-Verse, you are not only witnessing an artist’s 10-year dialogue with water, but also entering into your own.
WHAT: Hanien Conradie – Water-Verse: Traces of the Traceless, presented by Spier Arts Trust
WHERE: Old Wine Cellar, Spier Wine Farm, R310 Baden Powell Dr, Stellenbosch, 7603
WHEN: opening 31 October 2025 – 22 February 2026 | Open daily 9:00 – 17:00. Entry is free
INFO: VISIT | See also Cape Town Green Map
