ABOUT BENJAMIN STANWAX

Benjamin Stanwix lives and works in Cape Town. In 2016 he completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. Prior to this he studied History and Economics and read for an MA in History at the University of Oxford. He has participated in several group exhibitions and was an Absa l’Atelier finalist in 2017 and 2018. In 2018 his work was exhibited at the Arsenale in Venice as part of the Arte Laguna Prize, and he completed a residency at BoxoPROJECTS in Joshua Tree, California, which culminated in an exhibition entitled Always in two directions.

“It always troubled me that the truth doesn’t fit into one mind, that truth is somehow splintered. There’s a lot of it; it is varied, and it is strewn about the world.” Svetlana Alexievich

“I recently came across photographs on an old hard drive that had been damaged by some kind of technical fault. The result was a set of pictures in which an unexpected mistake and its visual traces seemed to mean something. Using this haphazard little archive as a departure point, I have tried to piece together a series of discernible markers (both abstract and representative) that stand in for the activity that takes place in the studio, where things both do and do not make sense, and where the pressure of the former must often be resisted.”

– Benjamin Stanwix 2019

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2019    ‘DESCRIPTION WITHOUT A PLACE’, INSITU GALLERY, WOODSTOCK, SOUTH AFRICA

2019    ‘THERE MUST BE SOME MISTAKE’, EBONY/CURATED, CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

2018    ‘ALWAYS IN TWO DIRECTIONS’, BOXO PROJECTS, CALIFORNIA, USA

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2018    ARSENALE, ‘ARTE LAGUNA PRIZE’, VENICE, ITALY

2018    ‘IN TO VIEW’, EBONY/CURATED, CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

LATEST PUBLICATIONS

2018    ANTI-PASTI, PHOTOGRAPHY MAGAZINE PRODUCED WITH MATTHEW MUIR – EDITION OF 25

2018    ARTE LAGUNA PRIZE CATALOGUE 2016 ARTISTIC TEXTS (PDF) – PAPER THAT INCLUDES A DISCUSSION OF ‘WHITE. BUT FIRST THE WEATHER’ PRESENTED AT “BOOKNESSES: TAKING STOCK OF THE BOOK ARTS IN SOUTH AFRICA” BY FABIAN SAPTOUW

2017    ABSA L’ATELIER CATALOGUE

2016    BENJAMIN STANWIX, GRADUATE CATALOGUE (PDF)

2016    MICHAELIS SCHOOL OF FINE ART, UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN, GRAD SHOW CATALOGUE