FORMS Gallery is a dynamic structure for working with artists.  It was founded by Anthea Buys in 2021 and works closely with ten artists, most of whom are in the early stages of their careers. 

FORMS draws on gallery, institutional and independent curatorial models, presenting a programme that takes shape through a combination of online and in-real-life manifestations. At the heart of this programme are ongoing collaborations with artists who make work that is critically, aesthetically and politically important. Also central to the FORMS ecosystem are connections with like-minded spaces, people and organisations.


View and purchase available artworks on Artsy 

Contact
Instagram


FORMS Gallery is a dynamic structure for working with artists.  It was founded by Anthea Buys in 2021 and works closely with ten artists, most of whom are in the early stages of their careers.

FORMS draws on gallery, institutional and independent curatorial models, presenting a programme that takes shape through a combination of online and in-real-life manifestations. At the heart of this programme are ongoing collaborations with artists who make work that is critically, aesthetically and politically important. Also central to the FORMS ecosystem are connections with like-minded spaces, people and organisations.

Email
Instagram
Abri de Swardt

b. 1988, Johannesburg, South Africa 

On Artsy (coming soon)
Instagram
Website
Recent / upcoming exhibitions:

Time Is A Broken Umbrella 
 AVA Gallery, Cape Town, 10/03/2022–21/04/2022
Overnight Services
Javett Art Centre, Pretoria, 25/10/2021–30/10/2021
Tentacularity, Knotting and World-Making,
POOL, Online, 20/10/2021–10/11/2021

Texts:
“Riverwork”, Wherewithall, 2021
“On Glowing Struggle”, POOL Space,
2021
“Ideasthesia in Rehearsal: Overnight Services at Javett Art Centre”, ArtThrob, 2021
"Real Eyes (On Alice Mertens)", Adjective, 2017

Abri de Swardt is an artist based in Johannesburg. He holds a MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London, and has exhibited, performed and screened his work at venues including The Javett Art Centre, Pretoria; Rupert Museum, Stellenbosch; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Forum des images, Paris; the National Gallery of Art, Vilnius; the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; The Centre for the Less Good Idea, Johannesburg; KwaZulu Natal Society of the Arts, Durban; and the IV Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow. He has held solo exhibitions at POOL, Johannesburg (2018); MOT International Projects, London (2013); and blank projects, Cape Town (2011). In 2018 De Swardt completed a residency at Rupert, Vilnius, and is an upcoming artist-in-residence at Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen. De Swardt was nominated for the Foam Paul Huf Award 2022.

De Swardt’s work concerns the interrelations between queerness, decoloniality and the more-than-human. Slipping between the lens, time-based media and site-responsive forms of collage, his work critically engages an expanded notion of photography. De Swardt’s work challenges the ongoing effects of settler-colonial whiteness and masculinity in Southern Africa, and perceptions of queerness as ‘unnatural’ and ‘unAfrican’, through joining historiography with fiction, auto-ethnography, and the fantastical. His approaches emerge in response to both the fixity of the camera and the dislocation of digital networks, in as much as they do to the omissions of the archive and the irreducibility of wildness, imagining non-settled yet situated image ecologies. Collage is realised in his work directly upon the body as a frenzied surface occupied and inhabited, as adrift in bodies of water, and as transposed to narrative voice in order to explore the political potential of touch, fluidity, saturation and non-linear time. De Swardt’s work enacts ‘temporal drag’, a way of performing temporality which generates a different present directed towards transformative futures. From 2015 – 2021 his work focused on tertiary education and viniculture as persistent practices of settler-colonial annexation of land in South Africa, which he counters through the personhood of rivers.

Selected photographic works

Abri de Swardt, "Streams (I)", 2015, Giclée Print on Hahnemühle Baryta, 50 X 75 cm. Edition of 5 + 2AP. Abri de Swardt, "Streams (II)", 2015, Giclée Print on Hahnemühle Baryta, 50 X 75 cm. Edition of 5 + 2AP. Abri de Swardt, "Streams (III)", 2015, Giclée Print on Hahnemühle Baryta, 50 X 75 cm. Edition of 5 + 2AP. Abri de Swardt, "Streams (IV)", 2018, Giclée Print on Hahnemühle Baryta, 50 X 75 cm. Edition of 5 + 2AP. Abri de Swardt, "Outeniqua I: Hansie Cronje (it’s just not cricket/ in a moment of stupidity and weakness my whole world turned dark)", 2012, Light jet print on Fuji crystal archive metallic paper, 90 x 72,2 cm. Edition of 5 + 2AP. Abri de Swardt, "Outeniqua II: The Kwagga (the danger of lingering at a halfway house/ the event was a whisper, not a bang)", 2012, Light jet print on Fuji crystal archive metallic paper, 100 x 74,4 cm. Edition of 5 + 2AP. Abri de Swardt, "Outeniqua III: King George III (the tongue of malice may not paint my intentions in those colours she admires, nor the sycophant extoll me beyond what I deserve/ every man who does not agree with me is a traitor)", 2012, Light jet print on Fuji crystal archive metallic paper, 80 x 68,9 cm. Edition of 5 + 2AP. Abri de Swardt, "Bartholomeu Dias I: The São Cristóvão Anchors", 2009, In situ photograph, Mosselbay, Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle PhotoRag 308 gsm, 70 x 50 cm. Edition of 5 + 2AP. Abri de Swardt, "Bartholomeu Dias II: Treading upon an unshod shore", 2009, in situ photograph, Mosselbay, Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle PhotoRag 308 gsm, 70 x 50 cm. Edition of 5 + 2AP. Abri de Swardt, "Bartholomeu Dias III: The vindication of Adamastor", 2009, In situ photograph, Mosselbay, Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle PhotoRag 308 gsm, 70 x 50 cm. Edition of 5 + 2AP. Abri de Swardt, "Bartholomeu Dias Tropical: Terra Incognito (Bermuda Triangle)", Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle PhotoRag 308 gsm, 70 x 105 cm. Edition of 5 + 2AP.


Selected video installations

Abri de Swardt, "Ridder Thirst" (installation view), 2015 – 18, HD Projection with double seating structure, 13’36 min Abri de Swardt, "Ridder Thirst" (video still), 2015 – 18, HD Projection with double seating structure, 13’36 min Abri de Swardt, "Ridder Thirst" (video still), 2015 – 18, HD Projection with double seating structure, 13’36 min Abri de Swardt, "Ridder Thirst" (video still), 2015 – 18, HD Projection with double seating structure, 13’36 min Abri de Swardt, "I'll never wear sunglasses again" (installation view), 
2014, HD projection and chrome fans, 10'35 min Abri de Swardt, "I'll never wear sunglasses again" (video still), 
2014, HD projection and chrome fans, 10'35 min Abri de Swardt, "I'll never wear sunglasses again" (video still), 
2014, HD projection and chrome fans, 10'35 min Abri de Swardt, "I'll never wear sunglasses again" (video still), 
2014, HD projection and chrome fans, 10'35 min


Performances and other projects
Abri de Swardt, "Words Beneath Bridges", 2020, Performance, Rupert Museum, Stellenbosch, 45’00 min, Performed with Hendrik Nieuwoudt and Quinton Manning. Abri de Swardt, "Words Beneath Bridges", 2020, Performance, Rupert Museum, Stellenbosch, 45’00 min, Performed with Hendrik Nieuwoudt and Quinton Manning. Abri de Swardt, Installation view, "Ridder Thirst", POOL Johannesburg, 26 April - 17 June 2018, featuring "Ridder Thirst LP" (2016 - 18), Double 12’’ Vinyl Record, 62’40 min, with Stephané E. Conradie, Metode en Tegniek, Athi Mongezeleli Joja, Pierre Fouché, Khanyisile Mbongwa, Rachel Collet, Alida Eloff and Abri de Swardt. Abri de Swardt, "World", 2018, neon mounted on Perspex, 55 x 100 cm