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blank projects
Jonathon Garnham
Images coutesy of blank projects
blank projects is widely considered to be one of South Africa’s most cutting-edge galleries, leading the conversation around contemporary South African abstraction and its relationship to global narratives.
Founded in 2005 by Berlin-trained artist, Jonathon Garnham, blank began as an artist-led project space that operated out of Goschen’s garage in the Bo-Kaap. The project launched when Cape Town’s gallery scene was small but eager to grow, with few platforms available for artists to represent. As a non-profit, participating artists were free to experiment with full creative licence, devoid of the commercial pressures of having to sell their work depending on the market's taste, as well as loitering gallery production fees. As a result, the curatorial programme allowed for and encouraged highly conceptual and abstract bodies of work, challenging reductionist views of what quote on quote ‘African art’ could or does look like. The recognition the project garnered therefore led to blank transitioning to a fully self-sustaining commercial gallery, with one of their long-standing and most internationally recognised artists today, Igshaan Adams, signing with them first. Located in Woodstock since 2009, considered by many to be the heart of Cape Town’s creative pulse, blank’s large, warehouse-esq space accomodates its artists’ conceptually and physically ambitious scope.
The gallery remains Cape Town’s go-to for highly conceptual and abstract works that are uniquely relevant to an African context.
Founder: Jonathon Garnham
Directors: Hannah Lewis and Catherine Humphries
Associate Director: Thobile Ndenze
ADDRESS
10 Lewin Street
Foreshore
8001
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