DIRECTOR'S SELECTION | May 2026

BOYTCHIE, 2 Skulls in the Dirt

Mixed media, 80 x 42 cm

WILMA CRUISE, Eric Arthur Blair Suite V

Monotype, 89.5 x 75 cm

WILMA CRUISE, Eric Arthur Blair Suite VI

Monotype, 113.5 x 93 cm

JANE EPPEL, Sanctum

copperplate etching (hardground), 68.5 x 68.5 cm

Jane Eppel is a South African printmaker. Graduating with a degree in printmaking from the University of Cape Town in 2001, Eppel’s career has subsequently followed a circuitous route, to include printmaking, oil painting as well as collaborating with her husband, artist, Nic Bladen. Detailed and delicate, Eppel’s monochromatic etchings are deeply autobiographical, using motifs from the natural world to explore the push and pull of events in her own life. Fascinated by the interconnectedness of all things, of the micro and the macro, in Eppel’s work the strands of a spiderweb can allude to the imagined lines of a constellation or the bonds of a molecule. The quietness of her prints belies the physical rigour of their making: etching is a very laborious process, and a work can take weeks or months to complete.

Eppel has exhibited in London and New York and has had several solo exhibitions in Cape Town and Johannesburg, most notably at the Everard Read galleries and the Irma Stern Museum, South Africa.

SWAIN HOOGERVORST, Flowers III

Oil on canvas, 120 x 100 cm

‘My paintings draw their inspiration from a photographic starting point. My intention though is not to recreate a photograph, but rather to allude to what is referenced. My work deals a lot with memory and the recollection of time and events or encounters passed. I try to paint in a way that evokes the unreliability of memory but also the dream-like feeling we give it, especially if that memory is positive. Hence I paint in a way that is vague or potentially non-descriptive but which leaves visual cues as to what may or may not be there.’
- Swain Hoogervorst, 2024

SWAIN HOOGERVORST, Flowers in the Window I

Oil on canvas, 38 x 30 cm

CLAUDE JAMMET, Crucifixion of St Peter

Oil on paper on canvas, 94.5 x 59.5 cm

CLAUDE JAMMET, Life

Oil on paper mounted on canvas, 30 x 30 cm

My life-long production has revolved around mankind in his context of nature, but there is an urgency now to leave humanity out of the picture as the source of the decline of the natural world, and to give precedence to the species that are being wiped out daily.

- Claude Jammet

CLAUDE JAMMET, LIfe II

Oil on paper mounted on canvas, 30 x 30 cm

My work is also an attempt to apologise to posterity. We are now fully entered into the Anthropocene Era, the disappearance of the animals I am painting is sadly imminent, if not already a fact.

– Claude Jammet

LORIENNE LOTZ, Eating crow II

Oil and charcoal on canvas, 90 x 90 cm

Born in Zimbabwe and now working in Cape Town, artist Lorienne Lotz uses her work to speak to the spaces in between. Lotz' painting speaks to our paradoxes, it speaks to both the tenderness and brutality, and to our humour and terror.

Throughout her artistic practice, Lotz has explored oppression as a central theme, with the absurdity of the human condition forming the broader framework of her work. Her paintings intricately intertwine the political with the personal, reflecting the complexities and contradictions of our existence.
Idiomatic expressions—rich in absurdity and vivid imagery—often serve as the starting point for her work. She describes that these expressions are brought to her attention by an unseen force, almost with prescience or foreknowledge, as they align with both world events and personal experiences, deepening the meaning of the work and guiding its completion.

Eating crow is a colloquial idiom, used in English-speaking countries, that describes the humiliation of having to admit to being proven wrong, especially after taking a strong position.

MAJA MARX, Litmus

oil on Belgian Linen, 75 x 50 cm

Maja Marx's paintings are essentially hyperactivations of surface. Marx starts by mapping ‘found’ compositions onto her canvas, and then allows this process of transcription to self-proliferate. Once the optical field of each canvas has become alive, the artist uses the act of painting to literally ‘stare herself’ out onto the canvas. Each layer of paint, each engagement responds to the layers beneath to become rich self-referential fields in which the physical act of looking is foregrounded; surfaces that are read, looked at and stared into all at once.

MAJA MARX, Slow Fade to Blue

oil on Belgian Linen, 75 x 50 cm

Maja Marx's paintings are essentially hyperactivations of surface. Marx starts by mapping ‘found’ compositions onto her canvas, and then allows this process of transcription to self-proliferate. Once the optical field of each canvas has become alive, the artist uses the act of painting to literally ‘stare herself’ out onto the canvas. Each layer of paint, each engagement responds to the layers beneath to become rich self-referential fields in which the physical act of looking is foregrounded; surfaces that are read, looked at and stared into all at once.

BRETT MURRAY, The Great Unknown

Bronze, 35 x 25 x 27 cm (13 3/4 x 9 3/4 x 10 5/8 in.)

While some works evoke pathos, others stoke unease and allude to an inherent violence. The hopeful is countered with gaping holes that speak of the loss and damage that are an integral part of all human experience.