The Gallery
The Art.b Gallery, maintained and managed with support from the City of Cape Town, is the exhibition space for the Arts Association of Bellville. The organisation is innovative and community-orientated, supporting emerging artists and new ideas as well as those that are more established. Art.b Gallery provides a vibrant space to present and showcase the work of visual artists, raising public art awareness.
Art.b Gallery’s Current Exhibitions
There are currently two exhibitions at the gallery, ‘Abundance and Interference’ featuring Rosa Snyman Wessels and ‘Time Will Tell’ by Marelise van Wyk. Both shows engage with the human condition, albeit from very different perspectives. You can attend these exhibitions at Art.b Gallery until 27 May 2022, but they also run online until 27 June 2022.
‘Abundance and Interference’ featuring Rosa Snyman Wessels
Rosa Snyman Wessels obtained her Bachelor of Visual Arts Degree from Unisa in 2016. She works in various media, including painting, found objects, fibre or paper, and installation art.
Snyman Wessels had work accepted to Sasol New Signatures in 2009 and 2011 and the Thami Mnyele Fine Arts Awards in 2010, 2011, and 2012. She is part of the Contemporary Art Practice (CAP) group and has also participated in a host of prestigious exhibitions, including:
- Plettenburg Bay in 2017
- KKNK in 2018
- Absa JHB in April 2018
- Knysna Art Association in June 2018
- Knysna ‘CAP Wrap’ from December 2018 to January 2019
- The permanent exhibition at the Karoo Art Hotel in Barrydale from 2017 to 2019
- Art@39 in Grootbrak from 2018 to 2020
- Needlingshof, Stellenbosch Woordfees in 2019
She recently participated in a group exhibition at the Glen Garlou Gallery in Klapmuts from December 2020 until January 2021.
The ‘Abundance and Interference’ exhibition features artworks that express Snyman Wessels’ personal voyage, driven by unconscious impulses. It explores the play between the tangible and intangible. The works, layered with paint, glue, latex and plant material, create a silent tension between the mediums. They give the impression of something spilling over with abundance while the sense of interference lingers overhead.
Snyman Wessels says this body of work deals with the possibilities and promises held within the everyday process of creative action and unwanted involvement. While she believes abundance is around us or within us, something that hinders us is always lurking.
We can neither stop nor make the future more foreseeable, but we can enjoy the abundance that life offers us and strengthen our resistance against the overwhelming constraints of interference. Therefore, my work invites the visitor to take a detour and discover the hidden resources and interventions of life.
Rosa Snyman Wessels
‘Time Will Tell’ by Marelise van Wyk
Marelise van Wyk achieved her Bachelor in Visual Arts through Unisa in 2006 and is primarily a printmaker. She uses a variety of traditional and experimental print techniques to challenge the medium and enhance its expressive quality into more than just representation.
Van Wyk works out of her home studio in Simon’s Town and won the Eclectica Print Gallery printmaking competition in 2019. In 2020 she was invited to join the collective The Printing Girls.
She has participated in various group exhibitions locally and abroad, and ‘Time Will Tell’ is her third solo exhibition.
The cyclic interplay of life between creation and extinction inspires the body of work. As a result, textures in nature, created by erosion, corrosion, decomposition and the changing seasons, had a significant influence. She supported her theme by using imagery that refers to history, historical structures, and organic materials. “I relate to the continuous interplay between past and present that in turn creates an interconnectivity that allows new and ongoing conversations,” explains van Wyk.
Through this body of work, I relate to the stories of the past and the way in which we are constantly influenced and re-invented by personal as well as collective memories.
Marelise van Wyk
Visit Art.b Gallery
Both exhibitions close on 27 May 2022. Visit the Arts Association of Belville to see the bodies of work in person. You can find the Art.b Gallery at:
The Library Centre,
Carel van Aswegen Street,
Bellville
