JANE EPPEL

(b. 1979 Cape Town, South Africa)

Jane Eppel is a South African printmaker based in the Cape Peninsula, which is the smallest yet richest of the world's six Floral Kingdoms. Inspired by nature, her work focuses on the abundance and diversity which daily surrounds her.

Eppel's copperplate etchings are a contemporary interpretation of the traditional genre of botanical art. Her intricately detailed studies of local flora are depicted singly, in sequence, or knotted into suggestions of further shapes and signs. The quietness of the works belies the physical rigour of their making: copperplate etching is a very laborious process. From preparing the sheets of copper to finally etching the needle-drawn lines in ferric chloride, a work can take Eppel weeks and even months to complete. 

Though true to the ready familiarity of its subject matter, Eppel's flowers are not indebted to the conventions of photorealism. They operate as a form of storying, each of the works taking its place within a series of interlinked points, stages and movements. The artist’s eye is an obsessive one, probing the sensitivity of every stigma and stamen and matching their specificity with the exactness of her incisions. Yet the micro gives way to the macro and some of the flowers allude to seemingly more remote forms – to the imagined lines of a constellation and the orbital planes of a planet or, conversely, to the smallest unit of an atom or the bonds of a molecule.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2023 What I Feel When I Think About The Cosmos, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa

2022 Seduction, group show, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2020 On Being, a womxn’s group show, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa

        Journeys of the Mind, group show, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa

2019 Southern Aspect, group show, Everard Read, London, UK

        Recent Works, solo, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa, South Africa

2018 Winter, group show, Everard Read, London, UK

2013 Recent Work, solo, Rust en Vrede Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2012 TRACE, a joint show with Cathy Abrahams, In Toto Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa  

        An Alphabet of Fynbos, solo, South African Print Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

        Nature of the Earth: conversations from above & below, with Nic Bladen, Astrid Dahl & Katherine Glenday, Amaridian Gallery,

        New York, USA

2011 In Bloom II, group show, Casa Labia, Muizenberg, South Africa

        Print, group show, Rust en Vrede Gallery, South Africa

        Art on Paper, group show, Kalk Bay Modern Gallery, South Africa

        Recent Prints, solo, South African Print Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

        Natural Selection, with botanical sculptor Nic Bladen, Rust en Vrede Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

        10 Years On, group show, curated by Andrew Lamprecht & Jessa Mockridge, Michaelis Gallery, UCT,

        Cape Town, South Africa

2010 In Bloom, group show, Casa Labia, Muizenberg, South Africa

        Coppertone 77, group exhibition, Salon 91, Cape Town, South Africa

        20-squared, Dorp Street Gallery, Stellenbosch, South Africa

        Print, group show, These Four Walls Gallery, Observatory, South Africa 

        HEEMS, group show, Kruisrivier Farm, South Africa

        Art on Paper & Ceramics, group show, Kalk Bay Modern Gallery, South Africa

        Contemporary South African Art, curated by Geeta Chagan, Degree Art Gallery, London, UK

        Tretchikoff & Me, group show, curated by Andrew Lamprecht, Salon 91, Cape Town, South Africa

        Smorgasbord, group show, Wessel Snyman Collective, Cape Town, South Africa

        Affordable Art Fair, Bristol, UK

        Heartland, with Marieke Prinsloo &Mila Reyneke, Gallery at Grande Provence, Franschhoek, South Africa

2009 Let them eat cake, group show, Dorp Street Gallery, Stellenbosch, South Africa

        Angels IV, group show, Gallery at Grande Provence, , Franschhoek, South Africa

        Artworks on Paper' group show, Kalk Bay Modern Gallery, South Africa

2008 Sanctum, solo, Bell Roberts Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2007 RINT 07, group show, Bell Roberts Gallery, Lourensford, South Africa

        Greenhouse, group show, Bell Roberts Gallery, Lourensford, South Africa

2006 Orientation: bearing east, solo, Irma Stern Museum, Cape Town, South Africa

2004 Brett Kebble Award finalist

        Curiosity CLXXV, group exhibition, celebrating the University of Cape Town’s 175th anniversary, UCT,

        Cape Town, South Africa