Michelle Kruger
Michelle’s always considered herself to be an artist, even from a young age. “It’s been an uphill battle to eventually make a living out of art, but the journey has been a great learning curve to become the artist I am today. I love art that provokes an emotion, whether it be awe, disgust, joy or sorrow. Ideally, I’d like my art to make people happy.” She is a full-time artist exhibiting at the Inkbox Gallery in Kalkbay, as well as The Gallery Lifestyle in Ballito.
Her style evolved from painting portraits on old cardboard to experimenting with Lego bricks. Her first piece was a small rendition of a David Bowie portrait. Other pieces include Vincent Van Gogh, Tretchikoff’s Green Lady and Frida Kahlo. The pieces sold quickly and from there she carried on making renditions and reinterpretations of well-known artworks or artists. She likes playing with colour and doesn’t follow conventional routes.
“My favourite piece is a portrait of Vincent Van Gogh. I was absolutely in awe of it when I finished building it – the colours just worked out great and the look and feel were reminiscent of the original portrait.”
We asked her to fast-forward to five years from now and her answer was simple, “Hopefully, I’d have one big solo exhibition behind my name. Visit Japan for the third time and be married and content with all I have.”
Rozelle Greyling
“My artistic passion is driven by my experiences, investigations and knowledge gained through engaging with and capturing humanistic stories. The stories of those who operate on the periphery of the economy, working on illegal dumping sites and in municipal landfills to support themselves and their families.” Her first landfill visit in 2019 left her with the immediate impression that there was something to be documented – a narrative of the pervasiveness of consumerism and unsustainable relationship with discarded objects. Focusing on the mentality of “as long as it’s not in my backyard”, her artistic practice both past and present aims to challenge the viewers’ prevalent attitude and perception towards waste and consumption, and its devastating consequences, to make the invisible, visible.
Rozelle was born and raised in Odendaalsrus – a small farming and gold-mining town in the Freestate. Here, she specialised in contemporary portraiture and landscape photography while studying BA in Fine Arts. Using the aesthetic appeal of beauty and colour, her work aspired to capture the land, convey a sense of place, and document shifting realities, where people are re-imagined within contested spaces. Revealing the human vs nature conflict and warning about our impact on the natural world. A theme which increasingly recurring and foregrounded theme within contemporary art since the beginning of the 20th century. She’s currently a first-year MSocSci Tangible Heritage conservation student at the University of Pretoria.
“Over the course of my years of photographing polluted landscapes, I have learned that worth is not inherent. It’s something we as humans create, yet we are mostly unaware of our power to create value, especially when we’re in a more privileged position. It’s my intention to create an immersive experience that would evoke the presence of something beyond sight, which transports the viewer to the landscape or into the shoes of the reclaimer, giving rise to reflections and discussions about the waste industry as a whole.”
One of her favourite images is Sunset Scavenger, given how it illustrates how small we are in comparison to the waste we generate. People’s evaluations and definitions of trash and treasure are both content and context-dependent and aren’t fixed values.
Throughout her undergraduate degree, she was a part of several small student exhibitions and was fortunate enough to have been selected as one of the top ten finalists for the StateoftheART Gallery Award’s Visualizing Climate Change exhibition in Cape Town in 2021.
She, together with current Fine Art students from the University of Pretoria and the University of Johannesburg, had the honour of being included in the Documenta 15 exhibition, which will be held in Kassel, Germany. As part of this project, consideration is given to the expanded socio-political/economic relationships between waste reclaimers and urban communities as well as insights into the realities of the waste reclaimers’ day-to-day lives. The aim is not only to highlight the marginalised lives of waste reclaimers but also to emphasise the important role they play in waste management.
Her choice of paper usually varies between Ilford Fine Art Textured Silk (270gsm) and Ilford Smooth Cotton Rag (310gsm) depending on the piece. Due to the unique characteristics of each image/photograph, the paper selected is based on what best complements the subject matter, vibrancy, saturation, and colour of the image as well as contributing to the overall aesthetic and readability of the image.
“Throughout my life, I have always been ambitious and goal-driven hence my desire to complete my PhD in Heritage-related studies and go on to become a full-time conservator, archivist or university lecturer, specialising in photographic/archival collections in five years.”
Signature Green
A 25-year-old Illustrator and Graphic Designer from South Africa, specialising in Dark Surrealism and art associated with mental health awareness. Signature Green finds beauty in what the norm perceives as chaos, imperfections, and darkness. She’s always been the quiet kid drawing behind a closed door – escaping from reality through drawing, music, and writing poetry.
Her art doesn’t focus on standing out. Art is her shadow work, escape, and livelihood. The right people will see it either way. “My work was never meant for the masses.”
“Normal day-to-day tasks and conversations seemed difficult, dull and meaningless so art created a beautiful escape, a reason to move forward. I’ve always had a vivid imagination that wasn’t always understood or accepted. So instead of sharing my opinions verbally, art became a better form of expression. It’s something I did for myself and I only started sharing my work much later.
I translate my unspoken words into art. My pain, my joy, and my entire soul are scattered across every creation. They are visual interpretations of the things I keep within. There’s no message. It’s open for interpretation.”
Her favourite series is Frequency 2022. This series embodies a lot of heartache but also conveys the most strength she’s ever felt. It’s about evolving, healing, moving on, and never surrendering.
“We’re waking up and taking back control. We will no longer dim our light. We are our authentic selves. We accept and love our flaws. We grow and better ourselves. We are confident and unapologetic. This is the higher frequency.” – Signature Green – frequency 2022
She prints on Felix Schoeller True Fibre from Art of Print as it showcases the dark and bright contrasting work beautifully. It’s affordable and the quality is impeccable.
When asked about the future she replied, “Signature Green will be mounted on walls, printed on apparel, and tattooed on beautiful beings all over the world.”
Hélène Caux
“Very early on in my professional life, I committed to developing my photography to document people’s struggle to make ends meet. Their determination to start new lives despite exile and often after losing everything, their will to organise a better future for their children. I’m a self-taught documentary photographer and consider it my duty to record and share what I see, and the testimonies I hear. Photography is a powerful tool to document human rights abuses as well as people’s resilience.”
Hélène Caux has her master’s degree in American History from Sorbonne University and then studied journalism for two years in Paris. She started her career as a radio journalist in France and Belgium, and later for the United Nations in New York in the mid-1990s, while doing photography in her spare time. She’s been working for United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN refugee agency, for the past 22 years.
“I feel very privileged that I can use my passion, photography, in my profession. I also write stories on refugees and displaced people for UNHCR’s website and other platforms. This brings visibility to their plight and displacement through the media, civil society and governments.”
She doesn’t have a favourite photo but likes the picture of the 80-year-old Congolese woman in her small room in a refugee settlement in Zambia. She has no family and only finds comfort and support among other elderly refugees who, like her, have been refugees for decades. She told Hélène how lonely and anxious she feels every single day and keeps busy, by cleaning her few items of clothing every day. “I admire her courage.”
She’s done several exhibitions using the Hahnemuhle Rag Baryta paper, 315 grams. “The texture is amazing!” She loves the purity of the rendering of details and colours. She curated a group photo exhibition on refugees at the University of Pretoria last June and printed it on Ilford Textured Silk paper on DiaMount.
In 2017, she took a break from UNHCR to focus on her photography projects. “I needed a pause in my life after years of photographing and interviewing people who had survived the worst.” She exhibited several series, including the Myths and Powers of the Niger river, at the OFF of the Biennale des arts in Dakar. She also presented a series on wrestlers in Senegal and tanners in Niger at the Regards sur Cours art festival in Gorée Island, and in the Medina neighbourhood during the Parcours festival in Dakar.
“I have always felt it’s important to ignite a passion for photography among young people, especially the ones living in underprivileged communities. They’re best placed to visually document their lives and struggles.” Five years from now she wants to work on sharing her experience as a documentary photographer, and communicate what an incredible life it is to meet unique human beings through her craft.
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