It Shimmers in the Breach (a sketch for the approach to the edge) - An exhibition by Gretchen van der Byl
Upper Gallery
Opening date: 6 August 2026 – 17:00-19:00
Jade Nair
Curator
jade.nair@uct.ac.za
This work is about how we make, or fail to make, meaning from the world around ourselves. Assembled from fragments of unrelated visual and textual information – both factual and fictional - brought into temporary relationship with each other, the work asks how painting might remain provisional and improvisational, fluid in its refusal of any singular or conclusive interpretive moment. Often articulating a moment preceding catastrophe, the images both resist our grasp and assert a persistent claim on our attention. The question becomes, if every image is merely a footnote to another, unknown story, then what might a collection of such fragments add up to?