Artists Biography

 

Born in 1982, Wayne Matthews currently lives and works in Gqeberha. He completed his studies at Nelson Mandela University in 2006. Wayne exhibits as a multidisciplinary artist working mainly in collage, drawing and assemblage. His recent works feature sedimentary deposits of graphite, dust, foodstuffs, torn and pitted paper, palindromes and phonemes; fragments of word, object and image. They freely incorporate abstract, semi-figurative and figurative registers, metaphoric and symbolic language. His work draws as readily from contemporary visual culture as it does from literature and cosmogonic myth.  Behind the divergences of style, register and technical approach, however, there is an emergent iconography, one that implicitly involves these shifting approaches and materials as constituents of the subject matter itself. They speak of the intimate and generative interplay of significance in a context ultimately devoid of fixity.

 

In 2019 Wayne was awarded a fellowship from the Ampersand Foundation (New York 2019) and was an ABSA L’Atelier Merit Award winner in 2007. Wayne has lectured in Drawing, Art Theory and Painting and has worked as a curator and gallery manager and director. More recently, as one of three founding members, he launched the Labyrinth Project, exploring alternatives to curatorial praxis through interdisciplinary collaboration and experimentation. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions both locally and internationally and his work is featured in both private and public collections.