Rosie Mudge

Rosie Mudge (b.1988) obtained her BAFA with distinction from the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town. During her studies, she was awarded the Simon Gerson prize for excellence (2013 and 2012) and was selected to attend a symposium exchange for Masters students at Braunschweig University, Germany. In 2019, Mudge took part in an international group exhibition and mini residency in Mauritius which included a diverse range of artists from Australia, India, Africa and Reunion, to name a few. Mudge has participated in numerous South African group exhibitions as well as the Cape Town and Joburg Art Fairs. Her first solo exhibition was with SMITH in 2018. With an interest in curation, Mudge also co-founded Cubicle and Jnr, two transient project spaces in Cape Town. In 2019, Mudge co-curated the collaborative duo show Two Trees with artist Sitaara Stodel. Later this year Mudge will be participating in a new collaborative duo-exhibition with Johannesburg based artist Mmabatho Grace Mokalapa in association with the transient project space, Gallery Gallery. Mudge also plans to explore some further curatorial projects. Having grown up as the youngest child on a farm, much of Mudge’s childhood was spent in imagined worlds with friends and siblings, or spent in happy solitude creating, daydreaming and playing in her childhood bedroom. It is from this creative well of memory that Mudge draws significant amounts of inspiration: remembered silence, the warmth of the sun streaming across the bedroom carpet, frogs in chorus at night, recording radio songs onto tapes and transcribing them, writing to pen pals, playing at being another person, holding your breath underwater, letting candle wax drip over your hands, the emptiness of solitude, the fullness of the self. Transposing childhood experiments onto massive canvases necessitated the move from nail- polish to automotive paint and from the bedroom to a highly industrial factory space. Using an airbrush to layer her colours, Mudge, to a large degree, erases the artist’s hand from the work. In this place of seeming artist vacancy she seeks to evoke a deeply personal unvoiced feeling. From this viewpoint, her paintings open up to that safe space of individuality and self-creation, with dream-like hazy landscapes which entice the viewer to look further and step into a new reality, a different world. Her lastest solo exhibition, From my Balcony to Yours, continued in her signature style while delving deeper into the recesses of the mind. The paintings attempt to articulate that which cannot be said. They operate as artful Rorschach tests where each viewer may see something different – revealing something of their inner psyche. The surfaces of her paintings dance in front of one’s eyes. The effect is incantatory.

× Rosie Mudge (b.1988) obtained her BAFA with distinction from the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town. During her studies, she was awarded the Simon Gerson prize for excellence (2013 and 2012) and was selected to attend a symposium exchange for Masters students at Braunschweig University, Germany. In 2019, Mudge took part in an international group exhibition and mini residency in Mauritius which included a diverse range of artists from Australia, India, Africa and Reunion, to name a few. Mudge has participated in numerous South African group exhibitions as well as the Cape Town and Joburg Art Fairs. Her first solo exhibition was with SMITH in 2018. With an interest in curation, Mudge also co-founded Cubicle and Jnr, two transient project spaces in Cape Town. In 2019, Mudge co-curated the collaborative duo show Two Trees with artist Sitaara Stodel. Later this year Mudge will be participating in a new collaborative duo-exhibition with Johannesburg based artist Mmabatho Grace Mokalapa in association with the transient project space, Gallery Gallery. Mudge also plans to explore some further curatorial projects. Having grown up as the youngest child on a farm, much of Mudge’s childhood was spent in imagined worlds with friends and siblings, or spent in happy solitude creating, daydreaming and playing in her childhood bedroom. It is from this creative well of memory that Mudge draws significant amounts of inspiration: remembered silence, the warmth of the sun streaming across the bedroom carpet, frogs in chorus at night, recording radio songs onto tapes and transcribing them, writing to pen pals, playing at being another person, holding your breath underwater, letting candle wax drip over your hands, the emptiness of solitude, the fullness of the self. Transposing childhood experiments onto massive canvases necessitated the move from nail- polish to automotive paint and from the bedroom to a highly industrial factory space. Using an airbrush to layer her colours, Mudge, to a large degree, erases the artist’s hand from the work. In this place of seeming artist vacancy she seeks to evoke a deeply personal unvoiced feeling. From this viewpoint, her paintings open up to that safe space of individuality and self-creation, with dream-like hazy landscapes which entice the viewer to look further and step into a new reality, a different world. Her lastest solo exhibition, From my Balcony to Yours, continued in her signature style while delving deeper into the recesses of the mind. The paintings attempt to articulate that which cannot be said. They operate as artful Rorschach tests where each viewer may see something different – revealing something of their inner psyche. The surfaces of her paintings dance in front of one’s eyes. The effect is incantatory.

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