SELECTED ARTISTS

Francois Knoetze
Francois Knoetze is an artist based in Cape Town. He completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Rhodes University in 2012, graduating cum laude. He is currently pursuing his Masters of Fine Arts at Michaelis School of Fine Art. While he specialises in assemblage sculpture, using trash and other discarded objects as a creative medium, his work is multidisciplinary, incorporating performance and film as vehicles through which to further explore the symbolic and aesthetic potential of the materials used in his sculptures. Knoetze’s work is primarily concerned with the blurring of boundaries between body and object as a product of a consumer-driven culture. His work explores the personification of things and the objectification of persons by retracing discarded materials back to their sources – through homes, freight trains, factories, farms, shops – presenting an expansive account of the value systems and network of processes responsible for the commodities we accumulate. He exhibited in at the Absa L’Atelier in 2011 and at the Sasol New Signatures in 2011 and 2013. In 2012 he was named one of Art South Africa’s ‘Bright Young Things’. He has been involved in numerous theatre productions as set designer and puppet-maker, including works by the UBOM! Eastern Cape Theatre Company in 2012, Cape Town based Horse’s Heads Productions in 2013, and Mike Van Graan’s ‘Gevalle Engel’ which debuted at Aardklop in 2013. He is currently working on a short film, ‘Cape Mongo’, which will feature a series of site specific performances in and around Cape Town.