Contours Unveiled opens at Berman Contemporary on November 22, inviting Cape Town’s art lovers to step into a space where the ordinary becomes extraordinary. This debut exhibition introduces a vibrant roster of women artists including DuduBloom More, Inga Kay Lokwe, Lee-At Meyerov, Mellaney Roberts, Chrisél Attewell, Odette Graskie and Mandy Johnston. Together, they set a new benchmark for contemporary practice in the city, establishing the gallery as a thoughtful and necessary addition to Cape Town’s cultural scene.
The exhibition is a quiet celebration of transformation and presence. Materials familiar from daily life are elevated through repetition, layering and careful intervention. Teabags bloom into delicate constellations, glass flows and hardens into luminous forms, and fabric unwinds to reveal intricate architectures. In these gestures, fragility becomes strength, absence becomes presence, and the everyday is imbued with intimacy and meaning.
Contours are not boundaries but thresholds, navigating between permanence and change, vulnerability and resilience, memory and imagination. Each work asserts the importance of women’s voices in contemporary artistic discourse, offering perspectives that are as nuanced as they are essential. The exhibition invites viewers to pause, reflect and engage with art that feels both personal and universal, tender yet unflinching.
Berman Contemporary’s Cape Town debut positions the gallery as more than a space for showing art. It is a platform for dialogue, experimentation and community, where creative risk is celebrated and care is embedded into every gesture. Contours Unveiled encourages visitors to consider the possibilities that emerge when art is approached with attention, patience and curiosity.
Visitors will have the opportunity to witness visual artist Mandy Johnston’s steel wool sculpture burn, a striking ritual that illuminates transformation, on the evening of November 22 from 5.30pm to 9pm.
“The material that burns is steel wool. It is metaphorically representative of our organism. We believe it to be indestructible but, in this form, it is incredibly fragile, just as our bodies are,” Johnston noted. “These sculptures burn to highlight the fragility of life and try to make sense of the transitions we go through. I see this process as a rite of passage.”
Contours Unveiled is not just an exhibition; it is a conversation between material, memory, and the enduring presence of women in art. It is a chance to see everyday objects reimagined, gestures amplified and the fragile made unforgettable.
The gallery is located at Shop 5A2, Silo District, V&A Waterfront, just across from Zeitz MOCAA and Radisson Red.
