Ravelle Pillay
Born 1993, Durban, South Africa
Lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa
Ravelle Pillay holds a degree in Fine Art from the University of the Witwatersrand (2015). Pillay's work is informed by ideas of family, migration, nostalgia, personal and collective memory. Working primarily in painting and drawing, her practice has evolved from a process of archiving. She often draws from personal, family, found, and borrowed photographs.
Pillay is concerned with the material degradation of memory objects over time, especially photographs, as a way to consider the unreliability of memory and witnessing, questioning the act of remembrance. Her practice is concerned not only with the archival but with the material possibilities of painting. She often uses chemically incompatible mediums, allowing them to interact in accordance with their natures on the surface of the canvas.
Her work has been featured in exhibitions in Johannesburg and Cape Town, most recently in the group exhibition Silence Calling from One Continent to Another at Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg. She was featured in the 2021 FNB Art Joburg week and her work will be shown at the 2022 Investec Cape Town Art Fair.
Born 1993, Durban, South Africa
Lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa
Ravelle Pillay holds a degree in Fine Art from the University of the Witwatersrand (2015). Pillay's work is informed by ideas of family, migration, nostalgia, personal and collective memory. Working primarily in painting and drawing, her practice has evolved from a process of archiving. She often draws from personal, family, found, and borrowed photographs.
Pillay is concerned with the material degradation of memory objects over time, especially photographs, as a way to consider the unreliability of memory and witnessing, questioning the act of remembrance. Her practice is concerned not only with the archival but with the material possibilities of painting. She often uses chemically incompatible mediums, allowing them to interact in accordance with their natures on the surface of the canvas.
Her work has been featured in exhibitions in Johannesburg and Cape Town, most recently in the group exhibition Silence Calling from One Continent to Another at Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg. She was featured in the 2021 FNB Art Joburg week and her work will be shown at the 2022 Investec Cape Town Art Fair.
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