Former Grahamstown schoolgirl Jessica Kapp, a final-year fine art student at Stellenbosch University, is the overall winner of the 2018 Sasol New Signatures Art Competition.
Kapp, 22, took the coveted award for her rammed earth columns and embedded object installation piece, Mapping Time, at Wednesday’s awards ceremony at the Pretoria Art Museum, claiming R100,000 and a future solo exhibition as prizes.
Cape Town artist Peter Mikael Campbell took second place for a pencil work titled Kaisen, which means “change for better” in Japanese.
Two promising Port Elizabeth artists also fared exceptionally well: Kelly Crouse and Debbie Fann were two of the five merit award winners who each received R10,000.
Crouse’s mixed media work was titled Medication: CYH7NYO7, while Fann’s entry was an acrylic and digital print titled Cheque or Savings?
The keenly contested competition for emerging artists attracted 604 entries and the final shortlist was made up of 94 artists – including 17 from the Bay and two from East London.
Kapp’s work investigates whether fine art can evoke multi-sensory experiences of home through the use of retrieved objects and materials. It also touches on the subject of land reform. The objects have value both because of the site from which they were taken and for their intrinsic worth as “traces of dwelling; reconstructing fragments of retrieved objects and materials that illustrate concepts such as loss, trace, place attachment and reflection”.
The action of retrieval and the histories attached to the objects were central to Kapp’s investigations into “home” following the 2017 Knysna fires.
The former Diocesan School for Girls pupil said her arts journey was largely inspired by growing up “with a wonderful, creative mum”.
“As a child she’d often take my sister and I to her pottery classes and encourage us to participate in other creative classes.”
What excited her most about the creative process, she said, was “the unknown result”.
Interestingly, she only recently began to explore sculpture, having been more drawn to the mediums of printmaking and book-binding.
The New Signatures competition taught her about professionalism within the art world, she said, and the selection and curatorship of her own work.
“I did not think I would come so far in this competition,” she said.
“The possibility of winning a competition like this and creating a body of work for my own solo exhibition is something I could never have imagined for myself.”
She is now completing more rammed earth columns for her final exam in November and preparing for the Gradex Exhibition in December. Gradex is a student-run organisation showcasing the work of artists, designers and jewellers from Stellenbosch University.
New Signatures chair and judge, Prof Pieter Binsbergen, who is based at Nelson Mandela University, said this of Kapp’s entry: “Regarding the pressing issues of land, including pre-, post- and de-colonial struggles, the work’s ability to ambiguously navigate through and around these sensitive issues makes it worthy of being the winning artwork.”
Igsaan Martin, of Cape Town’s Gallery MOMO, noted Kapp’s “great execution with regard to the medium as well as the artwork’s comments regarding land reform and the effects on the Knysna area”.
Pfunzo Sidogi, from the Department of Fine and Applied Arts at Tshwane University, said the layering of rock and soil was indicative of “the layering of histories on a space or land”.
The 94 finalists’ works will be on display at the Pretoria Art Museum until October 7.
● More about the exhibition at www.sasolsignatures.co.za or contact Nandi Hilliard at artspta@mweb.co.za