INNER SANCTUM

INNER SANCTUM

50 artists explore their studios

If looking at an artwork offers the viewer a glimpse into an artist’s thinking, a visit to their studio is like stepping through a portal that reveals endless facets of the mind.

In these private, personal spaces, artists’ ways of working, their inspiration and what they surround themselves with, are laid bare for inspection and interpretation. Of course, no artist’s workplace is the same. The painfully neat and rigorously ordered; the unsettlingly chaotic; a simple computer in a corner, or a serene and styled atelier – they vary as much as the artists themselves.

For Inner Sanctum, Everard Read Johannesburg’s head curator Gina Molle asked a broad and diverse group of local contemporary artists to respond to a brief focussed on ‘how and where they create’. As Molle explains, “We didn’t want to limit them to painting a corner of the studio. We hoped they’d interpret the brief in whatever way they saw fit – whether it was capturing a moment in a sunlit corner, creating an homage to the endless coffees drunk in a day or a sculpture that speaks to the frustration of making”. The resulting exhibition is a wonderful, dynamic manifestation of this invitation. In it, fifty talented artists from South Africa and the African diaspora offer the audience access to their inner sanctums.

For enquiries please contact gallery@everard.co.za