Our Collection
Featured Artists
OF THE HERITAGE ART COLLECTION
Durant Silhali
PAINTER
Durant Sihlali worked across many media, and was one of the few contemporary artists who lived through the early years of the building of contemporary South African art. His work is modernist and realist and his first medium was watercolours. He later turned to sculpture using metal from car wrecks. In his work Sihlali captures the early moments of a still poorly understood perspective on modernist South African art.
Winston Saoli
PAINTER
Winston Saoli’s mixed-media abstractions, using brighter, primary colours and a translucent layering of shapes and figurative elements, have resulted in works of a pseudo-mystical nature, which galleries now promote as his finest work.
Beezy Bailey
SCULPTOR
Beezy Bailey’s prolific career includes painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking and ceramics. Bailey says he creates art “as a balm for a mad world – a corrective for our most lamentable human qualities, including a planet brutalized by extremes of wealth and poverty, environmental ignorance and negligence.”
Brett Murray
SCULPTOR
Brett Murray ’s sculptures explore the clash between African and European cultures in the old and new South Africa. “Through my work I hope to explore my jaundiced love/hate relationship with South Africa’s unfolding democracy.”
Bambo Sibiya
PAINTER
Bambo Sibiya draws on traditional printmaking techniques and works with acrylic and charcoal on canvas. His art centres around the spirit of ‘Ubuntu Ngabantu’, a term deriving from Zulu philosophy and translating roughly into ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’.
Sipho Ndlovu
PAINTER
Self-taught artist Sipho Ndlovu, was born in Alexandra township, Johannesburg in 1968. His mother was a domestic worker and he was encouraged to paint and draw while passing the hours of boredom waiting for his mother to finish work. His work is featured in the treasured Constitutional Court Collection in Johannesburg, as well as in many international private and public collections.
Jenny Stadler
PAINTER
Jenny Stadler has exhibited extensively over the past two decades. While her work is primarily oil on canvas, Stadler occasionally uses found objects such as Lion matchstick boxes and bubble-gum wrappers which have a nostalgic significance to South African Pop-culture.
Deborah Bell
SCULPTOR
One of South Africa’s most acclaimed artists, a transcendent sculptor, painter and printmaker. Bell is fascinated by ancient civilisations and their excavated artefacts.
The artist has often stated that she has not intended to create pieces at their current scale, but that her work has taken on a life of its own.
Lady Skollie
PAINTER
From papayas to bananas painted provocatively, art critics have stamped Lady Skollie ‘s works as ‘an erotic jolt to the art world’ to ‘mildly offensive.” Her goal is to spark crucial debates amongst men and women on taboo topics such as domestic violence.
Angus Taylor
SCULPTOR
Now in his forty-eight year, Angus Taylor’s ambitious nature has him tackling materials and scale that most sculptors would prefer to avoid. This has resulted in gigantic slate figures set into landscapes in various prestigious collections locally and across the globe.
Eduardo Villa
SCULPTOR
Eduardo Villa was passionately dedicated to the creation of an African identity in his work with an “acute awareness of his environment – natural, social and political.” His public sculptures mark the cosmopolitan landscape of Johannesburg expressing the universality of humankind.
Norman Catherine
SCULPTOR
Norman Catherine’s idiosyncratic vision – a combination of dark cynicism and exuberant humour, as well as his innovative use of everyday materials – has secured his place at the forefront of South African contemporary art for over three decades.
Nathaniel Mokgosi
PAINTER
Universally loved and respected by his students as one of the country’s most influential art teachers. The exaggerated social realism of his art mirrors his Mokgosi’s experience of the political abuse he suffered under apartheid.
Dylan Lewis
SCULPTOR
Dylan Lewis’ powerful works mirror that which is rich, raw and untamed in us and is borne out of concern for the environmental issues of our time. Today he is internationally recognised as one of the world’s most important contemporary sculptors of animals.
Owusu-Ankomah
PAINTER
Owusu-Ankomah is popularly renowned for his bold canvases, he uses broken patterns to challenge perceptions of what is normal and how it ‘should’ be. The Ghanaian today ranks among the most prominent representatives of contemporary African art in the world.
Ruan Hoffman
SCULPTOR
Ruan Hoffman uses ceramic earthenware to mould familiar objects such as plates, containers and tiles into wilful, irregular and misshapen forms. Adorning the plates with a vast array of images and text, the artists observations on life can be unapologetically political and confrontational.
OTHER FEATURED ARTISTS INCLUDE:
Lionel Smit, Lucky Sibiya, Paula Louw, Walter Battis, John Vusi Mfupi, Athol Moult, Berthold Moyo, Nicholas Shabangu, Thomas Mswangwale, Philip Badenhorst, Moses Masoko, Keith Zenda, Patrick Rapai, Andrew Verster, Dean Simon, Walter Westbrook, Cecil Skotnes
What We Do
INSPIRING THE NEXT GENERATION OF ARTISTS
One of the things so exciting about this Collection is that many of the artists are crafting the story of our modern heritage and yet these artists have never been exposed to the formal art world. We want to celebrate these talents and encourage the development of a vibrant, creative economy.
IVOR ICHIKOWITZ – FOUNDER
Birdsview Collection
TREASURED GEMS
Celebrating our nation’s creativity, this showcases the depth and variety of acclaimed African artists.
Molori Safari
VIVID EXPRESSION AND SOULFUL MOMENTS
Visit the Molori Safari Luxury Private Lodge
Rare opportunity to indulge your passion for art and nature in a Collection that features unusual handmade carpets, vibrant oil paintings and bold sculptures that nourish the majestic views of the Madikwe valley.
View Gallery
Art Crosses Borders
ART, INNOVATION & EDUCATION
Art Crosses Borders tackles xenophobia in Alexandra
VIEW our exhibition ART CROSSES BORDERS in Alexandra where we supported art entrepreneur Vika Mjoka, in his efforts to drive art innovation and art education.
It's a Fine Line
A HISTORIC MULTI-MEDIA EXPERIENCE
To pay tribute to our Constitution, our multi-media exhibition It’s a Fine Line, features 16 drawings by Dean Simon.
On permanent display at Constitution Hill.
The Exhibition puts a human face to those who sacrificed at great cost, for the freedom of South Africa.
Special Selection for ConHill
A MELODY OF MIXED MEDIUMS
Developing friendships between diverse audiences to show that art can literally cross borders and bridge creative communities.
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