Adele van Heerden. © Photo by Paris Brummer, 2024
Adele van Heerden talks to Naomi Meyer about Adele’s work and her Mirror exhibition, currently on show in Cape Town.
Adele, please would you tell our readers about your background and work?
I was born in 1989 in Cape Town, South Africa, where I now live and work. After graduating with a degree in fine arts from the Ruth Prowse School of Art in 2010, I continued my studies at the University of South Africa, obtaining a BA in history, politics and art history. I did the honours in curatorship programme with the Centre for Curating the Archive at the University of Cape Town in 2015, and ended up spending a lot of time in museums, working with museum collections and learning about the curatorial field. After that, I managed an art gallery in Cape Town for two years. During this time, I still had my own studio in town: very early on, I had become part of some DIY-style collectives at studios, and we hosted and curated our own exhibitions throughout the years. It was very punk-rock. The first one was on top of a panel beater workshop in Harrington Street. The core group from there is now Sidetrack Studio, and with growth and experience I think we’ve managed to build a supportive community – thinking back, these early years were very formative for me.
........
Thematic considerations that continue to come up in my work are the relationships between built, human-made and natural environments; design and art; and abstraction and figuration.
........
After the two years working in the gallery, however, I decided to return to my fine arts practice full-time. I think that my history in those different fields, and also working in a gallery as a curator for some time, enabled me to bring together everything I had learned from my undergraduate fields of study and professional work in my fine arts practice.
Figure 1: Adele van Heerden, Modulations series: Modulations I VI, 2023-2024. Colour and pencil gouache on film, 42 x 59 cm. © Photo by Paris Brummer
©
My work is largely autobiographical, so paintings are based on what I see and experience around me. I try to connect with the feeling of a place. When drawing and painting, I try to reconnect with those feelings, to process emotions and commemorate special moments. I try to remember and revisit them in a gentle way. Thematic considerations that continue to come up in my work are the relationships between built, human-made and natural environments; design and art; and abstraction and figuration. I am continually inspired by the shorelines, architecture and nature around my home in Cape Town.
Please would you elaborate on your Mirror exhibition and what inspired the art?
The exhibition is the culmination of a year-long journey that began during a residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, where I engaged in swimming in and painting the city’s iconic swimming pools as part of the ongoing A La Piscine project. On returning to Cape Town, I shifted my focus to the coastal shorelines and the local municipal swimming pool, Long Street Baths. My intention was to connect with these spaces, using my body, sketchbook and camera to observe and engage with the environment. The resulting works aim to capture the mood of these environments.
Figure 2: (c) Adele van Heerden, Flowstates, 2023, watercolour monotype on Fabriano Tiepolo, 100 x 70.5cm. © Photo by Paris Brummer
The title, Mirror, refers to the water’s surface as a physical mirror reflecting the surrounding elements, be it the sky, the weather, rock, or architectural structures. This mirror, when clear, also reveals the hidden worlds beneath the water. My work has always been concerned with the connection between us humans and natural environments. The waterscapes in Mirror are all based on specific locations I have visited. As I carried on with the project, it also became an interior exploration.
........
A transparent object like a piece of glass is simultaneously there and not there. It’s the object itself, with ripples and sparkles on the surface, and also a medium through which you can view things.
........
Water is a medium that affects light, refracting and reflecting it. One can find a whole world in a pool: sky, plants, light and darkness reflecting trees and clouds: a natural mirror. In French, such a decorative tank of water one will often find in a park is called a mirroir d’eau. I started thinking about how to represent transparency and how one draws something one can see through. A transparent object like a piece of glass is simultaneously there and not there. It’s the object itself, with ripples and sparkles on the surface, and also a medium through which you can view things. Human beings are attracted to shiny objects, things that reflect our appearance.
Figure 3: (c) Adele van Heerden, Out there, 2024, lithograph on arches, BFK Rives, edition of 10 2024) 40 x 32 cm . © Photo by Paris Brummer
This also led me to thinking about how another can act as a mirror to the self. Sometimes we just need to make a connection, have our thoughts and feelings seen and reflected back to us. The metaphor of the mirror extends to the idea of individuals as mirrors to each other, reflecting personas and experiences, creating an energy transfer of seeing and being seen.
Figure 4: (c) Adele van Heerden, Shorelines I, 2023, mirror ink and gouache on film 42 x 59 cm. © Photo by Paris Brummer
Modern artists experience many challenges: human as well as digital competition, ie, artificial intelligence. What are your thoughts on these matters?
I personally don’t feel threatened by artificial intelligence in art at all. I think that as AI art becomes more widespread, a flattening of culture or a perfection of visuals will occur. Things may start looking a bit the same. But I think that in reaction to that, the skills involved in physically making something with your hands – artworks with mistakes in them – will become more valuable, in a way.
........
But I think that in reaction to [AI], the skills involved in physically making something with your hands – artworks with mistakes in them – will become more valuable, in a way.
........
In terms of human competition, I think there is enough for everyone. Whenever I start worrying that there is too much competition, I try to see it as motivation to work harder and smarter and to develop myself in new ways.
Figure 5: Adele van Heerden, Piscine Butte aux Cailles exterior, 2023, crayon and gouache on film, 84 x 118 cm. © Photo by Paris Brummer
Please could you provide practicalities regarding your current exhibition?
Mirror will be on view at 131 A Gallery (131 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock, Cape Town) until 29 February.
Gallery hours: 10:00 am - 5:00 pm, Monday-Friday. Entrance is free.
Viewers are also welcome to consult my website, which has the entire catalogue: www.adelevanheerden.com.
Mirror, a solo exhibition by Adele van Heerden at 131 A Gallery, Woodstock, Cape Town until 29 February 2024. © Photo by Paris Brummer
The project of painting water started in 2021, when I was diagnosed with a hip condition that demanded surgery and a lot of rehabilitation, so I started swimming in the seas and pools of Cape Town. When I’m at a swimming pool, I just love to focus my eyes and stare at the patterns from the lines and tiles at the bottom of the pool – the way the water always moves and twists what is underneath, appearing like a kind of warping mesh. The Modulations series within the exhibition delves into these distortions and abstractions of shapes within swimming pools: the undulating lines of tiles and lanes, and the interior architecture of pools, frozen in time.
I’m interested in the stories around pools and their specific histories. I find that each pool has its own personality and quirks. In Paris, many of them are named after important figures in French swimming history: Alfred Nakache, Suzanne Berlioux, Annette Kellermann, Alice Milliat, Yvonne Godard and Jean Taris, to name a few. I remember my first time getting into a Parisian pool; it felt to me like there was a pool-going social contract that I wasn’t aware of in South Africa. I asked the person swimming next to me what the rules were. She replied: “There are many rules, but we don’t know what they are.”
Figure 6: Adele van Heerden, Butte aux Cailles interior, 2023, pastel and gouache on film,84 x 1189 cm. © Photo by Paris Brummer
Butte aux Cailles swimming pool is one of the oldest swimming pools in Paris, originally built as a bathhouse when a hot water table offering 25°C water was discovered there. The façade of the swimming pool is red brick, unusual for this type of establishment in Paris, and designed in the Art Nouveau style. Its interior concrete vault is supported by seven arches. The water in the pools is heated using district heating, but in 2016 a partnership was announced with the IT company Stimergy to use the heat produced by their servers in the basement beneath the swimming pool. This made it possible to remove the data centre’s air conditioning, which consumed 250MW and emitted 45 tons of carbon dioxide per year.
Figure 7: Adele van Heerden, Secret Sanctuary: Long-Street-Baths, 2023, mid-panel pastel and gouache on film, 84 x 12 0cm. © Photo by Paris Brummer
The Long Street Baths (my local swimming pool) is an indoor “secret sanctuary” at the top of Long Street in the CBD of Cape Town. It’s built in a combination of Art Nouveau, Victorian and Edwardian styles. It’s an important place of gathering, part of the “social infrastructure” that contributes to the public life of the city of Cape Town, and makes it possible for people to connect and build community. In this context, the Long Street Baths is a safe space, with many good memories for people of different generations and backgrounds. I often hear about friends’ fathers who used to work in the area and go swimming there at lunch time or after work, rather than going to the pub. For years, the baths were known as the “slipper baths”; I read that people who lived in the flats nearby often walked over there in their slippers for a dip and shower.
Figure 8: Adele van Heerden, Piscine Josephine Baker, 2023, ink and gouache on film, 84 x 118 cm. © Photo by Paris Brummer
Piscine Josephine Baker is in a barge on the left bank of the River Seine in the 13th arrondissement. It was named after the actress and French resistance heroine, the first American-born woman to receive France’s highest military honour, the Croix de Guerre. According to architect Robert de Busni, the swimming pool was a challenge to design because it required naval architecture and engineering to be successful. Although it was built in sections, the whole structure had to be assembled on site such that it could be taken down and constructed elsewhere if required. The pool takes water from the river and treats it before use, then recycles it back into the Seine, the water purer than before. The sliding roof is opened when the weather is good, giving the impression that you are actually swimming in the River Seine.
In addition to Van Heerden’s signature pastel, colour pencil, ink and gouache on film techniques, Mirror introduces her latest printmaking explorations in collaboration with Cape Town print studios. Monotypes created with Georgina Berens at Loft Editions and the artist’s first lithograph with Stephen Inggs at The Print Kitchen add a new dimension to her artistic repertoire. – arttimes.co.za
Also read:
After nature by Lien Botha and Jaco van Schalkwyk: "An interconnected offering"
"Wees geduldig, maar wees braaf": Anton Kannemeyer se raad aan jong kunstenaars