Lifestyle

Signature art exhibition combines five distinctive artists' styles

Totang Motoloki with one of his pieces at Thapong PIC. THALEFANG CHARLES
 
Totang Motoloki with one of his pieces at Thapong PIC. THALEFANG CHARLES

The five visual artists are Totang Motoloki, Tshediso Kedumetse, Mpho Kgopiso, Moleboge Mokgosi and Loretta Mekgwe.

The exhibition curator,Thabo Kgatlhwane who is the director of an artist management agency called Cellar Door Arts said they represented a number of visual artists in Botswana like the award winning, Motoloki.

“Motoloki asked us to plan an exhibition for him and he wanted it to feature four other artists and have the theme be as open as possible.

That’s when Signature art exhibition was born. It is a theme that caters to the essence of the artist because every creative has their signature style for the specific way they mix their colours. Each artist has a certain way they express themselves so it was the perfect theme,” he noted.

Kgatlhwane further disclosed that they then went through their catalogue and looked for artists whose styles were different but complementary to Motoloki’s.

“We have Mokgosi, a surrealist, Kedumetse, a realist, Mekgwe, an abstract artist and Kgopiso whose painting style makes his paintings look like they’re radiating light. And of course Motoloki whose mixed media pieces, mostly done using recycled material and oil paint on canvas are unmatched,” he highlighted.

Kgatlhwane admitted that because of Covid-19 it was near impossible to get everything planned on time.

“We had hoped to get a few sponsors but Covid-19 affected almost every company we approached so everything had to be handled in-house. And for a company that was struggling because of Covid-19 such as ourselves, it was quite taxing to come up with this exhibition but we prevailed,” he added. 

Kgatlhwane further said they have a beautiful working relationship with Tumisang Petso and her company called, We Believe In Art. He said they set upon planning what they guarantee will be one of the best exhibitions Botswana has had to date. “We will have an invitation-only private viewing session between 10am and 12 noon on Saturday April 24 and public viewing will begin at 2pm and end at 6pm,” he concluded. The exhibition will run from tomorrow until May 6 2021.