August Art Month 2025 – “In en Om Ons | In and Around Us“
Welgemeend Art Month 2025 returns with an exhibition focussing on painting, photography and contemporary sculpture.
CAPE TOWN – Drawing on the extensive Kilbourn Collection of modern and contemporary South African art, the exhibition In en Om Ons/ In and Around Us explores what it means to be an artist working after the advent of photography. The exhibition – a cornerstone of Welgemeend Art Month, now in its 12th year – will feature select paintings and photographs from the Kilbourn Collection that explore ideas of subjectivity, consciousness, home, play and work.
The artist selection ranges from important modernists Enslin du Plessis, David Goldblatt, Wolf Kibel, Francois Krige, Jürgen Schadeberg and Maude Sumner to contemporary painters Hugh Byrne, Norman Catherine, Richard Mudariki, Deborah Poynton and Asha Zero, as well as photographers Lien Botha, Lunga Ntila and Jo Ractliffe. The exhibition will explore how photographers and painters share ways of seeing and recording the world, but just as often diverge in these portrayals.
In en Om Ons / In and Around Us will also include a concise selection of contemporary sculpture from the Kilbourn Collection. The selection emphasises shared interests in form, time and abstraction. Featured artists include Juliet Armstrong, Dominique Edwards, Robert Hodgins, Warren Maroon, Hylton Nel and Rina Stutzer, among many.
Frank and Lizelle Kilbourn will this year collaborate with writer and curator Sean O’Toole in developing the focus and theme for the 2025 exhibition at Welgemeend Art Month.
Sean O’Toole: “It is a great pleasure to think and play with the Kilbourn Collection, an encyclopaedic collection of South African art assembled with great enthusiasm over many years. In developing the exhibition, I returned to a first love, photography, of which the Kilbourn Collection holds a surprisingly diverse amount. In en Om Ons / In and Around Us looks at how photography – introduced to the Cape in 1846 – has reshaped ways of seeing, recording and representing the world. The exhibition explores visual and thematic correspondences, as well as fundamental differences, between the two mediums. The exhibition will also spotlight the Kilbourn Collection’s holdings of contemporary sculpture, presenting work with shared formal and conceptual affinities.”
The 64 works from the Boerneef Collection, which usually hang in Welgemeend, will be exhibited at Strauss & Co in parallel to Welgemeend Art Month throughout the month of August.
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About August Art Month: Established in 2014 by art collector Frank Kilbourn and auctioneer Stephan Welz, Strauss & Co’s founding director who passed away in 2015, the initiative aims to shore up support for Welgemeend, a historic home on the slopes of Table Valley built in the 18th century and subsequently enlarged by the Homer family. Welgemeend was declared a national monument in 1944. It is owned and managed by Jan van Riebeeck Hoërskool, in collaboration with the Friends of Welgemeend. August Art Month is an important source of revenue for the maintenance and preservation of this landmark Cape property.
About Strauss & Co: Strauss & Co is Africa’s leading art auction house. With monthly online sales and marquee live auctions, Strauss & Co offers African and international art, as well as design, wine and jewellery, at all price levels. Market leaders in modern and contemporary art at auction in Africa, Strauss & Co (founded in 2009) actively champions artists, designers and wine producers from the African region. It supports various education and community engagement programmes. www.straussart.co.za
About Delaire Graff Estate: The Delaire Graff Estate in Stellenbosch was acquired in 2003 by Laurence Graff, Chairman, Graff Diamonds International, and opened to public in 2010 as a world-class destination for wine, art, cuisine, and an escape from the everyday. The estate produces supremely elegant vintages from Bordeaux reds and Chardonnay grapes grown in vineyards situated on the slopes of Botmaskop Mountain. The estate is also known for its large showcase of art from Laurence Graff’s personal art collection. www.delaire.co.za