GFI gallery launches unique ink art exhibition
THE Gutsche Family Investments (GFI) Art Gallery in Park Drive officially opened an exhibition in celebration of ink as a medium of art on Wednesday evening.
The Collective Ink exhibition is a showcase of diverse artworks by over 40 artists from Port Elizabeth, Cape Town and Johannesburg.
The gallery invited artists to submit ink-created works in block print, linocut, etching, mono print, dry point, ink drawing, ink painting, and fine art photography mediums to be showcased at the gallery until April 30.
“The emphasis of this exhibition is for the display and sale of quality Ink produced works,” GFI exhibition coordinator Elizabeth van den Berg said.
Exhibiting along other artists is photographer Karl Schoemaker, showcasing photographs from his Prison Cells series. Schoemaker took the photographs of apartheid-era graffiti at the former prison cells below ground at the former Baakens Street Police station, where many people were imprisoned under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act.
“I find these images quite hard-hitting and being in that place [to take photographs] was a very emotional experience for me,” Schoemaker said.
He said he had intentionally kept the photographs as “plain” as possible so as not to dilute the truth in them.
“I took photographs at one of the smallest cells there and it hit me hard seeing tiny toilet and how small everything was ... there were other cells where the prisoners wrote on the walls how devastated they were and why they had been locked up,” he said.
The photographs on exhibit form part of a bigger project, Schoemaker said.
Other exhibitors include Bay ceramicist Donve Branch, fine artist Thembalethu Manqunyana, Jonathan Silverman and Pola Maneli among many more.
The GFI Art Gallery, located at 30 Park Drive in Central, is open from 10am until 4pm on weekdays, and 10am until 1pm on Saturdays and public holidays.
For more information contact (041) 586-3973.