Research Student, School of Fine Art | Photography and Visual Communication
Student Researcher, UCA Farnham
Bio
Personal profile
I am an artist and researcher. I obtained my first degree at the Johannesburg University in South Africa in 1991. I moved to Germany in 1992 and studied at the Universität der Künste Berlin. In 1995 I came to London to continue my practice and study at Goldsmiths University of London where I obtained my Masters Degree in 2002. Alongside my Fine Art practice I have also worked as a commercial artist for several animation studios in Johannesburg, Berlin, Cologne and London before I started teaching in 2006. I live and work in London.
Activities
I exhibit internationally and my work is represented in all major public collections in South Africa as well as UK public collections and international private collections. I was nominated for the Jerwood Contemporary Painters Award in 2008 and was selected for the John Moores 24 Exhibition of Contemporary Painting.
Supervisors:
Edward Chell
Prof George Barber
Dr. Francis Summers
Personal website
www.guntherherbst.com
Research statement
Research Project Title
Painting Postcolonial Displacement: Re-Conceptualizing Modernism in South Africa.
This research is concerned with the inception of modernist architectural and planning ideas in South Africa during the 1930’s, which eventually provided a rationale for delivering a program of institutional segregation, resulting in race based urban spatial structures and inbuilt inequalities. My aim is to examine apartheid architecture through a sculpture and painting practice and in particular modernist symbols and signs as the signifiers for those times and conditions, in its rendition of and its contemporary “ghost”.