Nota III

Hanneke Benadé completed a BA (Fine Arts) in 1993 at the University of Pretoria. After graduating, she spent a further four years working there as a part-time lecturer in drawing. Benadé has exhibited extensively and participated in various local and international group shows and art events. She participated in the Johannesburg Biennale and was represented at the London Art Fair. Her first solo show, ‘Local Girls’, was 1996 at Gallery on Tyrone, Johannesburg. After relocating to Cape Town, she showed ‘Passage’ at the Chelsea Gallery in Darling, followed by ‘The Gift’ at the US Gallery in Stellenbosch, and ‘Once More, Wants More’ at the Scukan Gallery in Pretoria. Her most recent solo exhibition, ‘Stage’, was at the Everard Read Gallery in Cape Town.

Benadé has received numerous awards, including Merit Awards at the ABSA Atelier (1995/6) and a Brett Kebble Award (2003). In 2008, she received two Kanna-Awards at the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees in Oudtshoorn. Her work features in various collections, including those of the Pretoria Art Museum, Gauteng Provincial Government and the Universities of Stellenbosch, Pretoria, Free State and Johannesburg, as well as corporate collections like Spier Holdings, Rand Merchant Bank, SAB, Hollard House, Sanlam, Sasol, Telkom, ABSA, and the British American Tobacco Company.

For her print she used softground and spitbite: softground is an etching technique, looks different from hardground etched lines in that they are crumbly-looking rather than wiry and aren’t even from end to end. Softground is essentially beeswax mixed with petroleum jelly or tallow and a small amount of asphaltum; the wax and petroleum jelly or tallow retain the ground’s softness, allowing for a crisp impression of anything pressed into it.

Spitbite, an aquatint technique, involves etching gestural tonal gradations similar to ink washes and loose watercolour marks by painting directly onto a rosin-covered plate with ferric chloride, an etching mordant.