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.”

In May 2021 I travelled to the Richtersveld, on South Africa’s north-western border with Namibia. It is a large biodiverse desert, known for it’s unique rocks and epic scenery.

I knew I was headed for days and days of road-tripping through impressive arid landscapes, with many rocks to befriend. I decided to take some of my own rocks with from home, rocks that I’d collected in many other places over the years. I wanted to introduce these rocks, some from the Tankwa Karoo, some from the Drakensberg, to the rocks in the Richtersveld, to see if they would get along. I hoped to make a project out of it, perhaps a photographic project, but I tried a few times and I was never happy with the images that came out. In the end I decided it was enough to have had my own quiet moment in a rocky, shady valley, with my rocks silently speaking, perhaps in a foreign language, to the local rocks of the Richtersveld.

A project that I did achieve in the Richtersveld was to have two exhibitions. I brought with me some print outs, in black and white, of photographs that I’d taken in urban landscapes – in Germany, Georgia, and New York. These places, these faraway cities, felt so completely out of place and nonsensical (as I imagined they would) after having spent a few days immersed in the other-worldiness of the Richtersveld, far away from any human infrastructure or phone signal. I wanted to witness the contrast of these environments for myself, the opposition and tension they presented, perhaps to try and understand why I am so drawn to both.

The first exhibition I put up at sunrise on Glybank. The second was at Kokerboomkloof. The only witness to these exhibitions was my partner at the time.

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

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