Impressions of a Creative Community
Reading 'Group Show' Through Its Makers: The Overlapping Lines That Hold Us
There’s an intersectional quality to creativity that captivates my weaving mind when I arrive fully at an exhibition.
An artist’s work, the curator’s eye, a writer’s distillation of their practice, and even the gallerist’s storytelling all culminate in an intricate interplay of ideas that shine collectively as an offering of consideration and care. This sensitivity of ‘coming together’ felt particularly alive in Kamyar Bineshtarigh’s recent solo exhibition with Southern Guild, titled ‘Group Show,’ where our local creative community lines were revealed, like intertwining roots uncovered in freshly turned earth, and continue to grow with each text read and conversation shared since engaging there initially.
When visiting, I was first greeted by these ephemeral hanging tablets and then by a gallerist who kindly handed me a printed copy of Thulile Gamedze’s exhibition text, ‘Transfer, Memorial, Exposure: The Studio Samples of Kamyar Bineshtarigh.’ Next to greet me was a warm feeling as I looked out around the gallery, listening to my friend bring the exhibition to life with their personal reflections on the works, text, and the experience of bringing the show together into a cohesive whole. This tender-hearted feeling swelled within my chest as I learned the names of artists who offered their studio spaces for collaboration with Bineshtarigh, whose work employs a cold-glue transfer technique to create ghostly castings of surfaces- in this case, the walls and floors of artists’ studios across the country.
Gamedze thoughtfully describes the transfers of these creative spaces in her text as a “collection of interiors and interiorities,” which are “at once archaeological samples, memorials, and psychic exposures.” She explains that these works “continue Bineshtarigh’s enquiry into the potential of these surfaces to still time and preserve history, while also highlighting the social exchange between the art practitioners that is fundamental to the transfer.” These social exchanges build on each other, allowing a sense of community to pass through the overlapping lines of connection- into the works themselves, and the white halls of the gallery.
Across the room, the wall vinyl read: “with gratitude to the following artists,” and as I skimmed the list of collaborating creatives, I recognised the collective strength found in the interconnectedness of this industry- much like the sturdy hessian that supports the almost skin-like studio ghost-bodies of Bineshtarigh’s transfers; acknowledging artists I have worked with, researched, and even some I know as friends. This quickly became a playful game of noticing: could I carefully observe the landscape of each transfer and deduce the artist reflected within, without consulting the artwork list? A little Gallery-Guess-Who… And in the fleeting marks, colourways, keepsakes, sentimental springboards, and quiet messages to oneself, my mind began to find markers that pointed beyond the evanescence of style (often a strong focus in our world), to the oftentimes overlooked joy of personality.
From boldly scrawled black text that screamed Brett Seiler with: “IF THERE WERE CIGARETTES SPECIFICALLY FOR MOFFIES WOULD THE BRAND BE CALLED FAGS” and inspired a smile, to the familiar paint splatterings on Sibusiso Ngwazi’s floors, the warping figures that creep consistently through the work of Dominique Cheminais’ or contrastingly, the pastel colours that drift dreamily to us from the hand of Amy Levi- with every piece, our creative community felt present and memorialised in time.
The significance of the title ‘Group Show’ becomes poetic as marks of the maker(s) are explored, both Bineshtarigh and the 24 artists included, prompting thoughts on the nature of authorship, creative identity, and the role of meaning-maker across all art forms and mediums.
Gamedze’s words served as both window and nest as I moved through the space. A richness of description vividly captures the realities of these works: “a reddish dog raining lines of pigment,” contrasted with interesting conceptual anchor points, such as those that discuss Daniel Buren’s theories on the function of the studio.
The golden thread that binds her thoughts also embroiders a language, reflexivity, and mode of understanding into the tapestry of meaning-making that defines this exhibition. By extending one’s path through the community garden of creative practice, one can appreciate with equal weight the output of writers who, in many ways, also pull, lift, and transfer as methods of wayfinding through the art-making practices of others in their own text-based artistic pursuits.
Those who know me know that my initial beeline at any exhibition or event is to the wall vinyl or handout (fine, perhaps accepting some wine along the way).
For several years, my career has focused on emphasising the importance of research and writing within the arts- lecturing these very modules to first-year students who mainly longed to return to the far corners of their studios. However, if I further unpack and explore the metaphor of culture as a community garden, I would posit that many see art as our potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, and melons, while arts writing might be painted as similar to fairy lights- strung up to illuminate the crops below, casting light from one vegetable box to another: a nice-to-have that sets the atmosphere and mood, a supplementary element to the “real” harvest we value rooted in the soil beneath (and therefore an easy target for cost-cutting with ChatGPT). However, I believe a far more accurate reflection of the relationship between artist and writer is to consider the science of companion planting (and if you aren’t a fellow green thumb, stick with me for a moment here…).
If art is to be our harvest crop, then art writing would undoubtedly be cast as the marigold, whose vibrant flowers, when planted in the same bed, support the growth and flourishing of those planted around them. Marigolds achieve this by enriching the soil (fostering cultural dialogue), attracting pollinators (institutions, collectors and media), and conserving moisture (building an archive). In every way, writing is not a secondary activity, but an essential part of a thriving cultural ecosystem.
Another layer to this thought form is that marigold flowers are, in fact, edible in their own right. This becomes quite clear when reading Keely Shinners’ review of the exhibition titled ‘The Underside of Making: Kamyar Bineshtarigh’s ‘Group Show’ at Southern Guild,’ which underscores her personal reflections, woven with sweet anecdotes and intimate memories, painting with words the currents felt by many cultural practitioners who visited the exhibition, I’m sure. Her writing offered a holding word for the warm feeling that met me that day in the gallery- sentimental.
As Shinners truthfully encapsulates:
“‘Group Show’ is sentimental and is all the better for it, because it captures something about the art world that is almost impossible to describe- impossible because it seems so far-fetched, impossible but, nevertheless, true: the art world is a place where love is.”
It was within this shared landscape of surfaces, stories, and written echoes that I was reminded that the art world’s truest harvest is not merely what we see, but the ways in which we are invited to see one another as we grow side by side. In my view, that is the most expansive and sustainable expression of love.
Southern Guilds’ curation provided the trellises and quiet clearings where feeling could take root, with the writings of Gamedze and Shinners reflecting back every variation, colour, and blossom of connection; my mind feasting on ‘Group Show’ by Kamyar Bineshtarigh. Together, I am reminded that the power of art-making, curating, and writing lies not only in expressing, framing, or interpreting but also in gently dissolving the disciplinary borders that seek to contain our responses to feeling or intellectualising.
By choosing to engage with all the creative modes and minds contributing to an exhibition, we open ourselves up to a richer, more intellectually embodied experience of art and culture- hopefully one with community fortified at the centre.
Reading List:
Gamedze, T. (2025) Transfer, Memorial, Exposure: The Studio Samples of Kamyar Bineshtarigh, Southern Guild. Available at: https://southernguild.com/exhibitions/group-show [Accessed: 15 November 2025].
Shinners, K. (2025) The Underside of Making: Kamyar Bineshtarigh’s ‘Group Show’ at Southern Guild, ArtThrob. Available at: https://artthrob.co.za/2025/10/03/peeling-back-layers-kamyar-bineshtarighs-group-show-at-southern-guild/ [Accessed: 15 November 2025].
