On 22 June 2023, Groot Gat, the exhibition to mark Lady Skollie’s win as this year’s Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Arts, opens at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda.
The show will then go on tour across South Africa – bringing powerful art and important ideas to diverse communities.

For this body of work, Skollie looked to Boesmansgat (Bushman’s Hole) in the Northern Cape. Before this deep body of water was expropriated by colonisers, it was a well and fishing hole for the local bushman community.
Today this largely unused sinkhole is largely known as a free diving destination.
In Skollie’s newest works of art, the hole becomes a metaphor for tackling some of the complexity of Brown identity in South Africa.

“If you’re Brown in South Africa, you have to deal with a big void, a hole, a gap, a forgetting within your own culture and within your own remembering. You’re defined by a hole in your own history that you have to fill up with your own stories and traditions, or even making your own new traditions”, says the artist.
Skollie uses her art to try and fill this giant chasm left by history, oppression and colonialism. To this end, for her Standard Bank Young Artist Award she’s created a fantasy realm, where on the other side of the deep Boesmansgat, the San, the Khoi, the Griqua and all Brown people on the Southern tip of Africa, have bloomed without being interrupted by the colonialism and forgetting.

Here she says, “their cave drawings are not faded or scratched or vandalised, but are giant and bright, just like my paintings”. Guarding this imagined world is a figure who is an homage to Bushman artist Coex'ae Qgam (also known as Dada). Qgam's paintings were a powerful expression of her people's connection to the land, their spiritual beliefs, and their daily lives. Her role in Skollie’s work is rich in significance – and contributes to “a place” where Brown culture is intact, and people know where they come from and where they’re going to.
Once the run at the National Arts Festival wraps up, the show will travel to The Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town and the Standard Bank Art Gallery in Johannesburg. “I had always wanted to win this award and am so excited about this show travelling - we’re also pushing very hard to get it to Kimberley and Gqeberha so all kinds of South Africans can see the exhibition”, notes Skollie.

Important National Arts Festival dates to note:
- Saturday 24 June 11:00 - Pre-recorded artist’s Walkabout at Gallery in the Round
- Sunday 25 June 12:00 - Pre-recorded artist’s Walkabout at Gallery in the Round
- Saturday 1 July 11:00 - Pre-recorded artist’s Walkabout 2 at Gallery in the Round
The National Arts Festival runs until 2 July 2023.

For more information on the exhibition, please contact Nkuli Nhleko on nkuli@everard.co.za or Stephanie Le Roy
on stephanie@everard.co.za