Stephen Allwright
Stephen John Allwright was born in Prince Albert in the Great Karoo in 1969. He received a Bachelor of Social Science (economics and politics) degree from the University of Cape Town with honours in Economics. Stephen is a self-taught artist and has been practising since 1998. He currently lives and works in Barrydale.
Allwright began painting in earnest after leaving Cape Town to spend two years in near complete isolation in Die Hel, a remote village in the Swartberg Mountains near his birthplace, Prince Albert. Since then he has been prolific, exhibiting most recently at the Tyburn Gallery in London and at SMITH in Cape Town. In 2017, SMITH had the distinct pleasure of exhibiting over 60 works by the exceptional fine artist. Now living and working in Barrydale with his wife and young son, Allwright has refined an uncompromisingly honest and unmistakable style that is at times erotic and even violent but more often heart wrenchingly tender. The work is a form of self-portraiture, although inverted: with the unfolding image as his guide, Allwright attempts to distil and decipher his impulsive responses to the manifest world by creating what he calls “an emblematic shorthand”.
“I usually meditate on a particular idea that has interested me while I walk with my dogs. The sound of my footfalls, my breathing and the dogs’ panting creates a rhythm that I try to include in a work. The degree to which I can achieve ‘accuracy’ through this process - including the context in which the process is played out - is reflected in the ability of said work to become a satisfactory repository, and thus a trigger, of a particular state of mind.”
Solo Exhibitions
2020 Broken Face Soliloquies, SMITH, Cape Town
2018 Fluid, SMITH, Cape Town
2017 Inclusions, SMITH, Cape Town
2015 Broken English, Tyburn Gallery, London
Art Fairs
2020 Investec Cape Town Art Fair, SMITH
2019 Investec Cape Town Art Fair, SMITH
2019 FNB Art Joburg, SMITH
2018 FNB Joburg Art Fair, SMITH, Johannesburg
2018 Investec Cape Town Art Fair, SMITH, Cape
2017 FNB Joburg Art Fair, SMITH, Johannesburg
2015 ‘That Art Fair’, Cape Town
2013 Cape Town Art Fair, Cape Town
Group Shows
2019 Rendezvous, SMITH, Cape Town
2019 Emphatic Whispers, SMITH, Cape Town
2018 Rendezvous, SMITH, Cape Town
2018 Close Encounters, SMITH, Cape Town
2017 Salad, SMITH, Cape Town
2017 Out of Nowhere, SMITH, Cape Town
2015 Joint show with Willhelm Saayman, Luvey ‘n Rose, Cape Town
Media
Hesitant Corporeality: A review by Ashraf Jamal.
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