We are thrilled to showcase a meticulously curated booth featuring the extraordinary talent of three distinguished South African artists. Suburbia Contemporary will present their captivating works, each offering a unique and thought-provoking perspective. First, we have the paintings and neons of Ed Young. A blend of poetic and ironic texts. His pieces invite viewers to delve into a world of words, provoking contemplation and evoking a range of emotions. Next, we present Amy Rush, elegantly and effectively sheds light on the urgent need for environmental consciousness in South Africa today. Jake Aikman, unveiling his latest series of abstract paintings. Aikman’s captivating works transport viewers to ethereal realms, where colors converge to ignite the imagination. With each brushstroke, Aikman invites us to explore the depths of our own emotions, encouraging personal interpretation and introspection.
Jake Aikman was born in London in 1978 and currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. He obtained his Masters of Fine Arts (specialising in painting) in 2008 from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, after completing his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2005. Aikman had his first solo exhibition, “This Must Be The Place”, in 2006 at Everard Read Gallery, Cape Town. Since then, he has presented six solo exhibitions including Echoes in 2009, Proximity in 2011, and “At the Quiet Limit” in 2013 at SMAC Gallery. His solo exhibition “Confini Velati/Veiled Boundaries” was presented in 2014 in Rome following a residency in Trevignano Romano in Italy, which was facilitated by the Centro Luigi Di Sarro. Aikman presented his sixth solo exhibition Haunt, at SMAC Gallery in Johannesburg, earlier in 2017.
In 2009 Aikman exhibited in “L’Anima Del Acqua: The Spirit of Water” an exhibition presented as part of the 53rd Venice Biennale. He was also an invited artist for the 4th Beijing International Art Biennale and exhibited in “Paralleli”, an official exhibition to the 2nd Sabbionetta Biennale in 2010, and the Olympic Fine Arts exhibition Creative Cities Collection that was held at the Barbican Centre in London in 2012. Jake Aikman took part in the “ArtUnitedUs” urban art project, where he painted a striking three-story mural on the side of a building in Kiev, Ukraine. The art project collaborates with communities to raise public awareness of issues around war, aggression, and violence. In 2017 was included in SMAC Gallery’s presentation at the 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London. During May 2018 presented “Vestiges”, a solo show at Suburbia Contemporary, Granada, Spain; in 2020 participated at the group exhibition “Surrounding” at Suburbia Contemporary – Satellite, Florence and in 2021 was present at “Urban Environments and Imaginary Spaces” in Suburbia Contemporary, Barcelona. In 2021 he had a solo exhibition “Still the light reaches us” Suburbia Contemporary. His work has been presented at Enter Art Fair Copenhagen, in 2022. At FNB Art Joburg and ICTAF Cape Town Art Fair in 2022 and 2023. His most recent exhibition ‘Listeners’ was held at Suburbia Contemporary in October 2023.
Ed Young (b.1978) lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. Spanning almost twenty years, Young’s cross-disciplinary practice can broadly be defined as conceptual and ranges from painting, sculpture, and installation to video, performance, and writing. Recent solo exhibitions include HERO (2019) at Open 24hrs, Cape Town, Bad Gallerist (2018), and CASH OR CARD (2017) at SMAC Gallery, Cape Town, and Johannesburg respectively. He has presented special solo projects at the Armory Show in New York (ALL SO FUCKING AFRICAN, 2016) and at the Cape Town Art Fair (Bad Taste, 2019). His work has been featured on local and international group exhibitions, most recently NO SHOW MUSEUM: From Dada to Nada at the Helmhaus Zürich in 2019. In 2018 and 2019 respectively, Young participated in the INDEX: Freiraum-Stipendium and 25 Hours Hotel residencies, both in Zürich. His work is represented in various private and public collections, including the Iziko South African National Gallery (Cape Town), Ilham Gallery (Kuala Lumpur), Fondazione Imago Mundi (Treviso), Southern African Foundation for Contemporary Art (South Africa), NO SHOW MUSEUM (Zurich) and A4 Arts Foundation (Cape Town). Born in Welkom, South Africa, Young received his MFA from the University of Cape Town in 2005, where he is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Medical Microbiology.
Amy Rusch (b.1990, Cape Town, South Africa) is an interdisciplinary artist. She explores an expression of mark-making, using stitched thread into layers of found plastic bags. The layers of plastic, connected by the motion and soundscape produced by the machine, communicate aural and material aspects of our modern culture. The threads are an attempt to link and comprehend millions of years of layered stratigraphic time. Her current body of work is informed by ocean crossings, archaeological excavations and microscopic studies of the living world. The works can be seen as tracings, translations or mappings of sensory lived – body experiences, becoming multisensory coalescences of sound, vibration, line and colour. ”Cutting, stitching, heating, pulling, binding, gathering, layering – these practices demand their own rhythm by turns slow and meticulous then quick, fast interventions. The motions enacted in making provides a retrospective link to the embodied experiences, transmuted in the process. The machine stitching into plastic bags is not about replicating an experience, an object, or anything formally understood. The process is about sitting with the remnants of man-made materials; human time in contrast to the elemental and deep time.”
Amy worked on a body of work titled ‘LINEATIONS and Times Pathway’ for SESSIONS 2022, an 8-month process for visual artists guided by Dominique Edwards. This body of work attempts to find a new form of listening and brings together time explorations in iterations of expansion and compression. The machine-stitched works contain a very specific aurality that stands in contrast to the quieter and slower pace implicit in hand-stitched, or heat compressed plastic works. Lines contained in the works are isomorphic markings like the lines on a nautical chart, or the lines plotted on a map that represent motion and movement across the surface of the earth, which are translated into the traced lines on the chart or map. Thus, the work hopes to retain a felt awareness of movement through time and space. She thinks too of the invisible“thinking strings”, the lines that empathetically extend and connect us with all – human and more than human.
AWARDS
2022 The Norval Sovereign African Art Prize (Finalist),
CapeTown, South Africa
2021 Sasol New Signatures (Finalists Exhibition),
Pretoria Art Museum, South Africa
