Mok Gallery, Stellenbosch (2026)

02/12/2025

Artist: Liza Wilson

BIO

This series of sculptures I have been working on for the last couple of years are all non gender specific. My aim was to explore different identities. Sometimes we are a part of the collective and at other times as individuals.

It started with Block Head (image I). Then I got carried away and jumped ahead to more specific identities. Later I realized that Block Head needed further exploration.

Thus “Block Head 2, 3 and 4” came about. I needed a slower evolving process before moving onto a more defined version of the different identities.

Wood is my go to medium, sometimes including metal pieces to compliment the wood surface. I salvage all my wood from different places and always focus on retaining the History of the wood as much as possible. For example “Block Head 2; Four Elements”is assembled from the floor of a sheep shearing shed. Marks left by the sheep, screws and nails have been preserved. As is the case with “Blockhead 3; Trapped Horizons”. Traces of insect activity has left definite traces in the wood. The metal parts come from metal salvage yards and in this way I give new meaning to materials that have been discarded by society.

I also like leaving hidden written messages in my sculptures. Normally encased in the body section of the sculptures. So not accessible after the body section has been sealed. This is just a personal inclusion I like to leave as a personal trace of my own thoughts.

24/11/2025

Book this coming Sunday on your calender to attend a great exhibition done by the July group of students who attended the Advanced drawing workshop by Diane Victor. See you there at Glen Carlou.

13/11/2025

Our recent, 5-9 November advanced drawing workshop by the phenomenal artist and tutor, Diane Victor was very well received by all the participants. Here are a few pictures, the project brief was to make an Avatar of the self and use it as a reference for drawing. It was really very exciting, the prep process, participation, long hours, having Diane to encourage and teach and bonding with other artists.

03/11/2025

Piekenierskloof pass. This particular pass holds special significance for JohanCoetzee Artist . In 1952, as a young boy, he travelled across the old pass with his parents to visit his grandfather in Namaqualand. The pass was originally built by Thomas Baines in 1898 and remained in use for a century, until the new pass was opened in 1998. Baines completed the pass in one year with the help of 2000 bandits who had to face dangerous abysses moving huge boulders manually. In image number 8 Baines's modest home can be seen on the right side of the road. According to JohanCoetzee Artist, peope had to disassemble their oxwagons before ascending the mountainous terrain before the pass was completed. In 1898, when the pass was opened, the Argus reported: "Now you can cross the mountains with your horse cart."

When Johan decided to create these artworks of the old pass, he retraced that route on foot, walking along the gravel road and photographing the views that resonated most with him. In artwork number four, you can see the new pass on the left, just below the rocky outcrop. In artwwork number 8 Baines modest house is visible.

Visit MoK website at https://mokgallery.com/johan-coetzee-oil-and-watercolour/ for more information.

26/10/2025

Escape

19/08/2025

Excited to announce that the formidable .victor will be hosting an Advanced Drawing Workshop. Venue:
Stellenbosch.
Date 5-9 November 2025. Places are limited, contact me if you are interested.
This intense workshop challenges the artist to stay authentic and to recognise and improve on their shortcomings. It is life changing and highly reccommended. Diane is a very generous, highly knowleadgable and committed tutor.

08/08/2025

Diane Victor Workshop 9-13 July 2025 retrospective:
The group of 15 artists that participated in this workshop were so immersed in and dedicated to the task that I thought I had to share their progress leading up to the final product.
The artists were asked to use the narrative of three books that made a profound impression on them and create three diorama boxes, from which they would create their artworks.
The third artist that I would like to present is Sarah Day
Dr Sarah Day is a public health researcher and serves as the Senior Research Officer at the School of Public Health, University of Cape Town. She is an emerging public health researcher with expertise in community-based participatory research processes. Throughout her research career, she has demonstrated her commitment to social justice, criticality and innovative and arts-based research practice. Her research work focuses on earlier cancer diagnosis and palliative care. Her artwork explores themes that emerge from her research work, including patients’ and healthcare workers’ experiences, her own experiences as a researcher and knowledge of the healthcare system.
Artist Statement
My work explores how systems of bureaucracy reinforce violent social structures that produce, maintain and normalise inequality, oppression, marginalisation, exploitation and exclusion, often along identity lines. For this series, I specifically focus on how people, communities, healthcare workers and researchers must navigate the bureaucracy of the South African health system to receive and provide quality care. I drew on Paul Farmer’s (2004) article “An Anthropology of Structural Violence” which is published in Current Anthropology as my primary narrative. Embedded within this, I have drawn on animal fables as mechanisms of indigenous oral history telling that speak to moral lessons of human interactions, the destruction of nature and indigenous worlds, and a subversion of persistent colonial realities. I drew on various academic texts which locate animal fables within decolonial praxis. Using photocopy transfers, I build up worlds with official documentation, such as SASSA grant applications, patient files, histology reports and death reports, that can create barriers to equitable health care. I overlay these worlds with charcoal and pencil to draw in the people and communities who live full and ordinary lives between the spaces of bureaucracy. Using negative space, I speak to both how systems erase and forget people and the resistance of people and communities to complete erasure.
References
Farmer, P. (2004). An Anthropology of Structural Violence. Current Anthropology, 45(3), 305-325.
Northover, R. A. (2019). Animal Studies, Decoloniality and San Rock Art and Myth. Journal of Literary Studies, 35(3), 108-125.

03/08/2025

Diane Victor Workshop 9-13 July 2025 retrospective:
The group of 15 artists that participated in this workshop were so immersed and dedicated to this intense workshop that I thought I had to share their progress leading up to the final product.
I would like to share the works made by these artists as a lot of hard work, thought and commitment was put in and I am extremely impressed by the final products.
The artists were asked to use the narrative of three books that made a profound impression on them and create three diorama boxes, from which they would create their artworks.
The second artist that I would like to present is Paula Dubois.

Biography:

Cape Town artist Paula Dubois has been exploring the intersection of faith and beauty since a young age. After studying at Pro Arte and the University of Pretoria, she earned a BA in Information Design and spent four years with Youth with a Mission, working cross-culturally around the world. Paula later built a career in print media as a designer, art director, and illustrator for leading South African publications. In recent years, she’s shifted her focus to fine art, exhibiting widely and holding her first solo show in 2020. She co-founded Salon 104 in 2022, a collaborative space for artists. Paula lives in Oranjezicht, where the mountain and sea continue to inspire her work.

Artist statement_Diane Victor Workshop:

Inspired by the creation story of Genesis, my work explores themes of chaos, transformation, and renewal. I’ve experienced deep unknowing – but also the hovering presence of something greater, a divine Presence that brings beauty from disorder. Motherhood, too, became an act of creation: raising my son as a single parent was both a calling and a crucible. Now, as he begins his own journey as an adult, I find myself again on the edge of something new – ‘letting go’ has become part of both parenting and the creative process.

My landscapes are built from layered textures and mark-making, using charcoal in all its forms – dust, line, smear – as a language of emotion. These abstract works are acts of faith, shaped by intuition and repetition. Even in darkness, the Spirit still hovers. And from that place, beauty is born.

01/08/2025

Diane Victor Workshop 9-13 July 2025 retrospective:

The group of 15 artists that participated in this workshop were so immersed and dedicated to this intense workshop that I thought I had to share their progress leading up to the final product.
I would like to share the works made by these artists as a lot of hard work, thought and commitment was put in and I am extremely impressed by the final products.
The artists were asked to use the narrative of three books that made a profound impression on them and create three diorama boxes, from which they would create their artworks.
The first artist that I would like to present is Anna Davel. https://mokgallery.com/diane-victor-workshop-9-13-july-2025-retrospective/

Bio:
Anna Davel has established herself as a singer-songwriter, but her first love has always been art. She attended 2 years of BA Art and Graphic design at NWU in the early 90’s, but since the course was terminated, she altered her degree to BA psychology & art history and started touring and focusing on her music career during this time.
During the first 2020 Lock down, Anna was asked to illustrate an online Music and Poetry project (Woorde I, II and III), and due to her music career coming to a halt and all concerts, festivals and tours being cancelled, she immediately agreed and accepted the challenge. Even though she has been creating art throughout her life, for the first time she had the chance to throw herself into creating art full time and to sell her work commercially.

Artist statement:

There is nothing new on earth. Everything has been said, painted, thought about and done.

For me, being creative is not necessarily to focus on the object or content I draw alone, but also about creating an atmosphere around the object. I enjoy taking something as simple and every day as a tree, umbrella, bird, a tent, a fish or a building, and then to add something contradicting, exploratory, magical, mysterious or even nostalgic to it by using colours, marks, layers, a unique combination in an unusual setting.

I have a childlike yearning to travel and experience new things, other worlds and cultures, and even though these opportunities are few and far between, I feel I can still do so through reading books, poetry and art. By creating art I can transport myself momentarily and have a window on a little universe that did not exist before. My aim is to transport the viewer to an imaginative moment in time.

I choose to elevate creatures and objects from an often-uncomfortable reality into a universe of fantasy, gentleness and winged escape, mostly to give myself a sense of emotional relief; a feeling of being set free even though my physical body feels tied down in a never ending rat race of a free-lance entrepreneur, never knowing where the next contract or project will lead me.

The book that Anna chose in preparation for the workshop was a text " Belofte van vere" written by Breyten Breytenbach, Daphnee Breytenbach.

Dit is ń teaterteks vir n nuwe musiekteater produksie wat open 6 Oktober in Potchefstroom by die Aardklop Nasionale kunstefees. / It is a theatre text for a new music production that opens on the 6 October 2025 at the Aardklop Nasionale kunstefees in Potchefstroom.

Geskryf deur / written by: Breyten Breytenbach, Daphnèe Breytenbach.

Saamgestel en geskep deur / compiled and created by: Anna Davel

Mok Gallery

02/12/2025

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