Meet the Artists

BRETT MURRAY

Brett Murray is one of South Africa’s most renowned artists, and has been called “The dark prince of South African pop (art)”. Working mainly with steel and mixed media sculpture, but adept in any medium, Murray aims to critically entertain through his work, which often includes pop-culture imagery he skillfully manipulates towards satire and the subversive. He is remembered by Wavescapes Surf Art fans for his infamous surfboard featuring a naked Bart Simpson with an erection, and the words “I Love Africa!”. Murray’s work has been exhibited extensively in South Africa and abroad, and he was the Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year for 2002. Murray is a full time artist and lives in Cape Town with his wife Sanell Aggenbach and baby daughter, Lola.

RICHARD SCOTT

Richard Scott has exhibited wordwide, and his iconic, simple style is recognised everywhere, particularly in South Africa and Europe. “I want to show the world, through my art, that I dislike conditioning. This has resulted in what we today term human society. The whole human element brought on by greed and policing have led to the building of barriers between what we think is freedom and what real freedom is. I want to be unique. I want to take the lead. I want to produce my thoughts through objects in the most simple, colourful and pure way. I have no formal art training. The world of the artist has nothing to do with your upbringing, it has everything to do with hype.” www.richardscott.com

CONN BERTISH

Bertish is the consumate agent provocateur and performance artist with a background in conceptual advertising and surfing. He is famous for making the ice board that was on display and sold at the Wavescape Surfboard Exhibition and Charity Auction in 2009. The movie he made about the ice board, including a time lapse of it melting, was a film festival hit overseas. This year, he achieved local notoriety after the mysterious appearance ofd hand-painted signs all around Cape Town, upon which there was a phone number you could phone. Conn is the founder of activist group The Surfer's Call. For the story of his work this year, in which he goes 'finless' in front of the Chinese Consulate, click here

OSNAT DE VILLIERS

Osnat was born in Jerusalem, Israel. She has been drawing and painting since she was 3 years old and as a kid specialised in art on the back of maths books. Osnat studied art and taught art in Tel Aviv, before moving to SA in1988. “I enjoy drawing and am always inspired by the beauty and power in nature”. She lives in Scarborough with renowned big wave pioneer Pierre de Villiers, and paints on surfboards, paper and canvass, and runs an art studio. She holds regular exhibitions in Cape Town.

PETER EASTMAN

When discussing Peter Eastman, mention is often made that he dropped out of art school after a year, foregoing formal education for a practical one to get going with his painting career. In current South Africa, a lack of a formal education is hardly unusual, but it provides an interesting insight into Eastman's work. He produces paintings on flat surfaces for the most part hung on walls. However, his unconventional approach and aesthetic sets him apart from many doing the same. His choice of subject matter is often a little arcane. Many of his paintings, notably his earlier works, are difficult to see. All of this serves to articulate Eastman's concerns around the viewer's relationship to his work, and to painting in general. Eastman always refers to his interest in how the work reflects on a viewer. Viewer and subject become almost indistinguishable. In this way, the painting becomes a foil for a viewer's self-reflection.

PETER VAN STRATEN

Undeterred by an acute sensitivity to irony, Peter van Straten has been trying for 25 years to perfect his response to the enormity and disarming absurdity of being human. His only wish is to be left alone for another forty years to continue this impossible task. Thus far his quest has led to incidental participation in 50 group exhibitions and spawned 18 solo exhibitions, most recently at the Irma Stern Museum, and at the Everard Read Gallery, Cape Town. You can find out more about his work at www.petervanstraten.co.za

MASIPHUMELE KIDS AND ONE LOVE STUDIOS

Sergio Rinquist (top). Claire Homewood (bottom). Our board is about ‘Freedom of Expression’. The kids wrote all over the board after we did a workshop on what the Constitution says about Freedom of Expression and its meaning. We designed two characters based on hand gestures the kids made up.  Claire wanted to talk about water, and reflect on the importance of being more water conscious and developing more creative and sustainable solutions for Cape Town.  Sergio was inspired by surfing at Muizenberg, the view from the back line, graffiti, the kids and the messages they wrote during the workshop. He left all the original writings of the kids as the fill in his character. On World Aids Day, we presented the finished board to the kids in Masi along with Desmond Tutu who thought the board was ‘wonderful!’

KIM LONGHURST

Kim Longhurst believes that craft is next to godliness. She is a mama, designer, illustrator, painter, embroiderer, gardener, purveyor of all things beautiful (and kitsch), partner to Scott Robinson. Her work has progressed from a shoe shine poster, the side of a bus, an underground zine, packaging, posters, t-shirts and book covers to publication in Martin Dawber's Big Book of Fashion. Kim has taken part in collaborative exhibitions, curated an exhibition of seven of Durban's top illustrators and made a curious little solo show, more cabinet of curiosities than traditional fine art.

SCOTT ROBINSON

Scott Robinson (a.k.a Dirty Sanchez) combines a love of all things glamorous and filthy (he calls it DirtyGlamourotica) with a dedication to the purest principles of design. Scott's illustrations have appeared in diverse publications ranging from i-Jusi, One Small Seed, SL, IdN and the Design Indaba Magazine to the Leurzers Archive. He has ridden the corporate bus, exhibited amoral canvases, customised shoes and skate decks, been the mysterious figurehead of a street wear label and is presently developing a range of limited edition toys. Always subversive, sometimes scandalous, never soft.

ND MAZIN

ND Mazin (aka Andy Mason) is a cartoonist, illustrator, book designer, editor, author, academic and goofyfoot longboarder. His underground comix, some going back to the ‘70s, include Cogent and Crint, Vittoke in Azania, The Adventures of Alison Wonderland, Praxis and Paranoia, The Big Chillum, the Legend of Blue Mamba, The Vittokes, New Planet TV and AZANIAMANIA. His new strip, Apocalypse WOW, appeared on www.wavescape.co.za. His alter ego, Andy Mason, has been head of the Comic Art Unit at Stellenbosch University’s Centre for Comic, Illustrative and Book Arts (CCIBA). His book on cartooning in South Africa, What’s So Funny? is widely considered the authoritive work on political cartooning in South Africa.

ZAPIRO

Zapiro (aka Jonathan Shapiro) is South Africa’s best-known political cartoonist. Born in Cape Town in 1958, he became an anti-apartheid activist in 1983 and was detained by the security police in 1988 shortly before taking up a Fulbright Scholarship at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Since 1994, he has been published in many newspapers and is now editorial cartoonist for Mail & Guardian, Sunday Times and The Times. Due to his hard-hitting cartoons about President Jacob Zuma, he is being sued by Zuma in two defamation cases amounting to R9-million. He has published 17 cartoon collections, has exhibited internationally and has two honorary doctorates. Among awards he has received are the 2005 Principal Prince Claus Award (Netherlands), the 2007 Courage in Cartooning Award from USA-based Cartoonists’ Rights Network International, the 2009 Press Freedom Award from the Media Institute of Southern Africa, the 2009 Mondi Shanduka Newspaper award for Editorial Cartoons and the 2009 Vodacom Cartoonist of the Year award.

GUY TILLIM

Tillim was born in Johannesburg in 1962 and lives in Cape Town. He started photographing professionally in 1986, working with the Afrapix collective until 1990. His work as a freelance photographer in South Africa for the local and foreign media included positions with Reuters between 1986 and 1988, and Agence France Presse in 1993 and 1994. Tillim has received many awards for his work including the Prix SCAM (Societe Civile des Auteurs Multimedia) Roger Pic in 2002, the Higashikawa Overseas Photographer Award (Japan) in 2003, the 2004 DaimlerChrysler Award for South African photography, the Leica Oskar Barnack Award in 2005 and the first Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography from the Peabody Museum at Harvard University in 2006. His series Avenue Patrice Lumumba has shown at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris; Museu Serralves in Porto; the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, Cambridge, USA; FOAM_Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam; and Extracity, Antwerp, in 2009; at Kunsthalle Oldenburg, Germany, in 2010, and at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago in 2011, among other venues. His work was included on Documenta 12 in 2007 and the São Paulo Bienal in 2006.

COLWYN THOMAS

Colwyn Thomas is an illustrator and documentary film maker living on the KZN north coast in Umdloti. His illustration work is a blend of the old and new. Japanese animation and comics are a strong influence. So are artists such as Japanese print maker Kawase Hasui and western icons Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. Colwyn studied fine art at UCT where he focussed on drawing and photography.  Hi s commercial illustration has been published around the world while his art has been displayed in various galleries you’ve most probably never heard of.