Rock drawings included on The Objects, a group exhibition of  sculpture, painting, drawing, photography, film and other enigmatic objects, curated by Sean O’Toole at Under Projects, Cape Town, July 2023.

The exhibition coincides with the launch of Sean’s new chapbook, The Object (2023), designed by myself.

An advent calendar artist book project, presented at A4 Arts Foundation, November 2022. An accompanying text by A4:

“Each year, before Christmas, Gabrielle Guy makes an advent calendar for her younger sister, Tabitha. Because Gabrielle is a bookmaker, these calendars take the form of books. On each page, Gabrielle has hidden something. The pages must be torn (beginning December 1 with the final page broken open on Christmas day) to reveal its surprise. Gabrielle's practice is as precise as it is playful. A devotee of humble things – bricks, corners, stones – and hidden moments, it is difficult to write of her accomplishments because she shies away from ever mentioning them. It is up to this writer to insist on doing so. At the time of writing, Gabrielle is the designer of more than 200 artist books and catalogues, for all of South Africa's most renowned artists. The list includes William Kentridge, Zanele Muholi, Jo Ractliffe, Igshaan Adams, Penny Siopis, as well as Phaidon's African Artists, to mention only a few. The number excludes books of her own photographic practice – of 'things to look at' and 'pictures of pictures' – to paraphrase Gabrielle's titles.

A practice in sisterly love and devotion since 2014, this is the first year that these advent calendars are available to be purchased and shared.”

View on A4’s website here.

A little thing I made for the end of the year, displayed at A4 Arts Foundation, Cape Town (December 2021 – March 2022).

From A4’s website:

“END x 1250 is a gift; an invitation to ‘please take one.’ Gabrielle Guy received a phone call from the printers letting her know that there was space on the sheet of a catalogue commission she was willing toward completion as the year approached its close. With the printing technique, paper, inks, page size and print run already determined by the project underway, she had ten minutes to think of something to salvage the space, or see it go to waste. The result is a slender, slippery stack of 1250 ‘ends’ (or thereabouts, accommodating the printer’s tendency to extras) for giving away. Gabrielle Guy makes books. As a ‘bookish’ artist, she is interested in pictures of pictures; the reproduction of artworks into the catalogues that she is most often assembling. Images in books are ordered. In being bound, the book is resolved. Where the book presents conviction, these are loose-ends, multiples, an end for whoever wants (or needs) it.”

“proto~ the store at A4 Arts Foundation is intended as a space for practitioners to imagine into, where they can sell edge objects that may as yet be propositional, from fragments to off-cuts. Because Gabrielle wanted to gift the work freely to the public, we decided to place it at the entrance to A4’s free-to-public library instead of inside the museum shop. As a take-away, END x 1250 plays with the proposition of the museum store. The ‘gift-shop’ comes to mind.”

Pictures of Pictures, an exhibition of eight photographs at Artist Admin, Cape Town, 3-17 June 2021.

“It was a bitterly cold February in Germany and I was bored. I had travelled on my own from Cape Town to Göttingen for the publishing of a client’s book, and in the evenings and on weekends I had time to kill. I walked up and down the high street. I climbed a church tower. I went out for dinner alone. I ate cake alone. I did some yoga. I read a whole book. I stared at the ceiling. I made some A4 print outs of photos of ceilings that I had taken on a previous trip to Berlin, as well as some new photos I began to take in the apartment I was staying in. I stuck them up with blue masking tape that I had brought with me (tip: always travel with masking tape). The resulting images are pictures of pictures of German interiors in German interiors. Interiors that feel different to what I’m used to. Interiors that make me feel different. Interiors with strange geometry. Interiors from the 1700s. Interiors with stippled walls, angled roof-windows and sloped ceilings.”

All works:
2020
C-prints
Editions of 5 + APs

Pictures 1-6:
size 12x16”

Pictures 7 & 8:
size 8x10

Please enquire for a price list.

A small photographic project self-published as an A5 booklet, printed digitally in a small run.