First up in 2024 / Aviwe Plaatjie

2024 is in full swing, and we’re excited to have an exceptional line-up of artists in the studio this year, including Kirsten Sims, Gerhard Human and Marna Hattingh. And first up is Aviwe Plaatjie, with his new screen print just off the drying racks and now ready for release.

This artwork, titled Ubuhle (“beauty”), epitomises everything we love about the screen printing medium and the art of collaboration: a slower, more considered process requiring great care and attention; a mutualistic co-creation that can only result from connection and knowledge that grow over time. As such, you could say that Ubuhle began seven years ago, when we first met Plaatjie at one of our screen printing workshops, after which our conversations continued and concepts developed.

His paintings are labour- and time-intensive, his painstaking treatment in oils producing very nuanced work, simultaneously weighty and nebulous. It was crucial to reflect that aesthetic and process in the 50ty/50ty studio, to take great care in creating an artwork that would resonate with his oeuvre while exploring the particularities that screen print has to offer. These aims were wonderfully realised in the outcome – a beautiful finished piece of subtle treatment of texture, pitch-perfect colour and tonal values that lend the work both gravitas and delicacy.