Catch Hout Bay artist at international art fair
A Hout Bay artist will exhibit at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, on Friday and Saturday.
The event is billed as the largest international contemporary art fair in Africa with 100 exhibitors and some 25 000 visitors.
Kilmany-Jo Liversage, who is originally from Bloemfontein, studied fine arts at the Free State Technikon in the 1990s and received a distinction in painting. She has exhibited murals in cities around the world, including one at the Venice Biennale in 2013
“Back when I was in pre-school in 1979, my teacher notified my parents about my artistic talent. From then on, my parents started sending me to private art lessons, and I began honing my creative passion for art,” she says.
“What I love about painting is that it frees me up and makes me calm. It takes me to a place where everything makes sense despite the challenges I face as an artist and ambitions I have.”
She draws inspiration from pop culture, fashion and social media. Spray paint is her medium of choice and she says she uses it, along with acrylics, to “challenge the traditional delineations between fine art and urban or street art culture”.
She adds: “I fuse Renaissance portraiture with a strident urban sensibility to create penetrating portraits and unruly floral still-lifes in a psychedelic palette of luminous pinks, blues and fluorescent yellows and oranges.”
Her paintings focus on inner-city alleyways and sites of both decay and gentrification.
“I find that the tag, squiggle and scrawl of graffiti carry as much gravitas and value as the high art of my forebears.”
Liversage says she also feels strongly about portraying the strength of women in her portraits.
“I think this is particularly important in the face of abuse of women and children, which persists as a major social problem in South Africa and elsewhere.”
Charl Bezuidenhout, the director of the Worldart gallery, who has represented Liversage for 14 years, says it’s privilege working with her.
“We’ve done many exciting projects all over the world. She’s got a strong work ethic and stands up for important issues.”
