Gail Behrmann

Gail Behrmann lives in Johannesburg and studied fine art under Bill Ainslie at the Johannesburg Art Foundation. She combines painting with a career as a film maker, concentrating on research for feature films and documentaries and film installations for museums, comfortably moving between both worlds. Behrmann was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis in 1988 and due to serious medical complications between 1994 and 1997 did little painting and concentrated on film making. However, stabilised and replaced with good spare parts, Behrmann energetically participates in exhibitions and private commissions. Behrmann’s chosen medium is oil and while the paintings still have their origins in landscapes, the images are abstract and explore positive and negative space. Over the last 10 years, her paintings are predominantly white. She has been involved in theatre productions for the Handspring Puppet Company and William Kentridge’s video installations. Additional projects include assisting Angus Gibson on video installations for the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. She has directed video installations for other museums as well as the Apartheid Museum and projects for corporate installations. Most recently, some films were directed under the auspices of producers Bomb Productions and Angus Gibson for curator Okui Enzor’s massive exhibition The Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life. On behalf and for the Apartheid Museum, Angus Gibson’s work which she researched was exhibited in the South African Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, also curated by Okui Enzor