Southern Guild Cape Town will open three concurrently running solo exhibitions featuring artists Adam Birch, Madoda Fani and King Houndekpinkou on 6 June 2024.
Adam Birch – Like Something Almost Being Said
Birch (photo above) presents a solo exhibition of functional timber sculptures, each entirely hand-sculpted and crafted from locally felled trees. This body of work features forked seating and large-scale functional forms emerging from an idiosyncratic and embodied conversation between object and maker. His practice roots itself in a honed and intimate understanding of the language of trees, with Birch acquiescing to what each piece of timber asks of him. “It’s about exploring the different shapes the wood can yield – pushing the boundary of what the material can hold,” he shares. “It’s a process of refinement rather than making.”
Madoda Fani
Madoda Fani – Madoda: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Cape Town-based ceramicist Fani’s solo exhibition is a mapping of urban Black masculinities that challenges hetero-normative narratives of the township Black man in South Africa. Re-imagining and re-imaging ubiquitous domestic objects in clay, this body of work deconstructs reductive and harmful cliches of Black masculinities, re-fashioning them with masterful skill and attention to craft. Madoda: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is a gesture of gratitude for and recognition of the Black men who shaped Fani.
King Houndekpinkou
King Houndekpinkou – Six Prayers
Six King Houndekpinkou Prayers by Franco-Beninois artist Houndekpinkou is a series of six large-scale ceramic sculptures, created in its entirety over the eight weeks he participated in the GUILD Residency. Known for his distinctive vocabulary of shape, texture and colour, Houndekpinkou’s work revels in unexpected hybridities, the product of a diasporic world-view that resists cultural borders. He has developed an explorative practice that blends tradition and ancient spirituality with modern techniques, drawing heavily from Japanese and West African culture.
Three excellent reasons to visit Southern Guild Cape Town.
WHAT: Adam Birch, Madoda Fani, King Houndekpinko
WHERE: Southern Guild Cape Town, Silo 5, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town 8001
WHEN: 6 June – 22 August 2024
INFO: T +27 21 461 2856 | E southernguild@theguildgroup.co.za | VISIT | See also Justine Mahoney: VIGIL | Rich Mnisi: Dzuvula (Shedding Skin)
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