Vusi Khumalo

 (b.  1951, Balfour North, Gauteng, South Africa)

BIOGRAPHY:

Vusi Khumalo completed his basic education in Germiston, thereafter spending 10 years working in various companies in South Africa.  In 1986, whilst still working in Germiston, Khumalo felt impelled to leave South Africa, as a long standing member of the African National Congress, and so left with his family for A.N.C. camps in Zambia and Tanzania.  It was in Dakawa Camp, Tanzania, where he first had an opportunity to explore fully his life-long hobby, art. Having completed his 0-level General Certificate of Education, through correspondence with the University of London, Khumalo began to be trained and later, to teach textile printing, art and design.  This culminated in a summer course in art in the Gerlesberg Art School, Sweden, in 1991.

In 1992, Khumalo was repatriated and the Dakawa Art and Craft Community Centre was re-established in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape.  He continued to teach there and his efforts won him a one year scholarship to the Konstfack National Art College, Stockholm, where he gained a certificate in textile printing and "art".  In 1996, Dakawa’s funding from Sweden was withdrawn and Khumalo decided the time was ripe for him to dedicate himself full time to his own art.

His efforts to render the South African landscape, and particularly the burgeoning squatter communities within that landscape, were frustrated, as he found that oil painting did not bring him the intense realism that he wanted to evoke.  This led him to his startlingly real collages.  Khumalo, by reconstructing the infamous squatter camps, takes us where we might, otherwise, fear to tread and, perhaps, reminds us that behind the media facade of brutality, crime and squalor, these "growths" on our landscape are populated by human beings under trying circumstances.

Khumalo is now working as a full time artist in the Eastern Cape, where he lives with his wife, Lokhuthula and their two children.

CV:

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:

2017

Southern Abstraction, group exhibition, Everard Read, London

2016   

Opening Gallery Exhibition, CIRCA Gallery, London, UK

Nocturne, Group exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town

Winter Collection, Group exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town

2015   

Empire, Group Exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2014   

People and Places, Group Exhibition, Imibala Gallery in association with Everard Read, South Africa

Postcards from Mzansi, Solo Exhibition, Everard Read Cape Town, South Africa

2013   

Possessed, Group Exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

Centenary, Group Exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2011   

Small Works, Solo Exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2010   

View from the South, Group Show, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

Khumalo, Mzimba, Dyaloyi, Three Man Exhibition at Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2009   

The City, Group Show, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2008   

The Wave, Chinese Cultural Exchange,  the Everard Read Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2007   

One Man Exhibition, Portland Gallery, London, UK

Exhibition at the Hubei Institute, Wuhan China as the second leg of a cultural exchange

2006   

Cultural Exchange – A group exhibition exploring China with 4 Professors from The Hubei Institute of fine art after a visit to Wuhan China – Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

Abstraction, Solo Show, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

2005   

Solo Exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2004   

One Man Exhibition, Portland Gallery, London, UK

2003   

Solo Show, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

2000   

One Man Exhibition, October at the Portland Gallery, London, UK

1998   

Solo Exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

1996   

Two Man Exhibition , Two World with Roxandra Dardagan and Skotnes Gallery, Albany Museum, Grahamstown Art Festival, South Africa

Me and Myself, Solo Exhibition, Wezandla Art Gallery, Port Elizabeth Textile Art Printing and Painting, South Africa

1995   

Manscape, Solo Exhibition, Wezandla Gallery, Port Elizabeth, South Africa

1994   

One man Exhibition, Konstfack National Art College, Stockholm, Sweden

1989-91

Part of a touring group exhibition in Sweden and Norway   

Saba Saba National Exhibition in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

SELECTED CORPORATE COLLECTIONS:

Cazenove & Co, Johannesburg

Coca Cola South Africa

Calajero

Capital Alliance Holdings

Daimler Chrysler (S.A.)

Didata, Johannesburg

E.F.T Corporation

F.B.C. Fidelity Bank

Fisher Hoffman And Sithole

Johannesburg Consolidated Investments Ltd

Mckinsey & Co (Usa)

Merril Lynch

Mvelaphanda Holdings

Old Mutual Plc (London)

Privest, Johannesburg

Sanlam

Standard Bank Investment Corporation Ltd

Telkom

Task UK Ltd

Vusi Khumalo’s works reside in many private collections in South Africa and abroad.