Collection: In The Making

The exhibition showcases works by the three members of Non-Site Art Collective, Adelheid Frackiewicz, Davina de Beer, and Franli Meintjes. Through the combination of these three independent artistic explorations the show aims to contribute to ways of understanding how personalised processes embedded in a rich sense of materiality result in unique visual languages. These visual languages not only reveal themselves, but they converse with each other and result in dynamic expressions of constantly being ‘in the making’.

Frackiewicz constructs her often large scale sculptural works by casting site-specific materials which she relates to places or bodies of trauma, like earth, hair, nails, and bone ash, into transparent resin soap bars. De Beer creates disrupted pattern paintings in acrylics or mixed media (acrylics and embroidery) on canvas and attaches the unstretched works directly to the wall, or places it together in painting installations. Meintjes’s abstract figurative fibre works are suspended from the ceiling or wall-mounted, creating an immersive installation that beckons close-up investigation into a fantastical realm. Each of the artist’s processes becomes a personal ritual. For Frackiewicz, the process of collecting site-specific materials and the repetitive process of casting, assists her to constructively engage with death and loss.

Her work to a large extent allows her to work through intergenerational trauma, specifically with regards to her grandfather’s escape from Poland during World War II and his forced immigration to South Africa. For De Beer, the processes of painting, deconstructing paintings, and reassembling new compositions from the fragments foster a sense of belonging. Meintjes finds that the softness of the yarn she employs introduces an element of vulnerability and intimacy that highlights the fragility and mutability of both nature and human experiences. The act of repeating patterns and motions through knotting, weaving, and using a punch needle creates a rhythm that evokes a sense of calm and order amidst chaos, reflecting the dual themes of sanctuary and dread in her magic realist landscapes. The materials explored in the exhibition primarily include resin, acrylics, canvas, embroidery thread, and fibre, and are unpretentiously presented and celebrated in their rawness. The fluidity of the resin, although contained in Frackiewicz’s soap bars, is reflected in the drips and hanging threads in De Beer’s paintings, as well as in the hanging fibres in Meintjes’s works. The exhibition juxtaposes repetitive actions such as casting, embroidering, knotting, and weaving, and in doing so attempts to reveal a nuanced perspective on ways of making sense of being in the world.