Cape Town

Stevenson is pleased to present a new chapter of The River by Wim Botha, on view at the Cape Town gallery as well as online at the Cape Town Art Fair's Digital Event  (17-19 September).

This ongoing installation, which debuted in the gallery’s Parktown North space in May, comprises intricate walnut carvings in miniature dioramas and ink drawings on paper, combined here in a single landscape. Wood, glass, marble and semi-precious stone remain central to The River. Individual small scenes - simple moments of contemplation, silence or activity - are positioned so as to suggest a waterway, semi-dry and ancient. The river, a potent symbol across histories and mythologies, serves as source and continuum, where the figures seem to be at peace and at leisure. Coherence of scale is disrupted in places with miniatures and larger-scale elements occupying the same plane.

In this iteration, The River is seen against the backdrop of a new series of drawings by the artist. Created with Japanese lamp soot ink, this selection of work varies across detailed references to the scenes in Botha’s waterway to oblique mark-making that alludes to and reinterprets elements of the installation.

To view works, see the online viewing room for the Johannesburg iteration of the show