Guy du Toit
Guy Du Toit was born 1958 in Rustenburg in the North West Province. He uses a wide range of media in his sculptures including bronze, stone, wood and steel, and draws in pen, ink and charcoal. He has exhibited extensively, both locally and internationally and been consistently supported by private and public collectors, institutions, academics and fellow artists.
Honoured with several awards, he curates and adjudicates exhibitions and lectures at a number of institutions, including Pelmama Academy in Soweto, Pretoria University, Johannesburg and Pretoria Technicons, and the Johannesburg School of Art, Ballet, Drama and Music. He gives workshops throughout South Africa and has been involved in community projects, seminars and symposia.
The past few years have increasingly been spent on private and public commissions and in working closely with artists and businesses, especially those involved in design, communications, architecture, advertising and entertainment. Guy currently teaches part-time at the University of Pretoria and works full-time from his new home and studio in Swavelpoort.
CRITICAL ACCLAIM:
“Sophisticated impressions.” Muffin Stevens
“I have long admired Guy du Toit’s sculpture. He has, by dint of steady production and consistently developing work, become one of South Africa’s most important artists, along the way winning the Vita Art Now award and numerous merit awards on major competitions.”
“… we can read (his works), their narratives, their histories, their passages and pauses, poetic flights, prose rhythms, allusions and alliterations,metaphors and similes, their nouns, verbs and punctuation. They set up webs of meaning and many strands to follow.”
“du Toit the formalist(’s) essential interest is in the visual game of space, form and shadow. This minimal and linear arrangement of the parts refers to the modernist severity that underpins the best work being done today in both South Africa and internationally.Postmodernism has brought back meanings in layers and floods, but stilla modernist visual rigor supports meanings in sculptors like South African Willem Boshoff, the British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor or younger artists like Rachel Whiteread or Damien Hirst.”
“There is a knowing range to du Toit’s work, from the bronze “high art” of traditional sculpture to contemporary installation and the found object.”ARTIST’S STATEMENT:
“My art making/working experience inSouth Africa for the last twenty five years, has been a vast one,stretching from apartheid to democracy, one that has moved from introspection/exclusion/apartheid/compulsory militaryservice/division/power, to democracy/extroversion/peace andfreedom/sharing/acceptance in a global society.As a young artist, my work was influenced by experiences of an unwitting/unwillingconscript doing compulsory service in the apartheid regime. Border and cross-border military experiences utilizing hi-tech military hardware contradicted the indigenous bow and arrows of the Khoi-San, both tools existing in the same time and space, performing similar functions, bu tutilizing vastly different economies and politics, now informed my sculpture. This and other absurdities often took the form of non-figurative, rather formal works that very often invited spectator participation. Almost absurd executive/power toys.
As my statusand the political situation changed so my work took on new references,slowly becoming more personal, inspired by my immediate environment andlivestock. Utility animals like indigenous (nguni) cows, goats andchickens were selected for their specific non-heroic, socialistmeaning. They functioned almost like found objects.
AsSouth Africa moved into coalition governing, animals become objects.After the elections of 1994 in a normalizing country, borders opened,art becoming more literary or discourse driven. My works are nowsomehow tilting toward the conceptual and installation, more universalthan provincial.
Where I now feel comfortable... Considering issues such as the art/craft debate as a topic, which was previously of no real relevance, or tackling things like Imperialism, Colonialism and being an African, without guilt or shame.
After ten years of democracy, I am only now able to engage art as the broader subject, rather than the previous, often futile, searches for place and identity. Oh yes, did I forget to state that I am a white male South African, happy and married, but now, on the bottom rung of the affirmative action ladder?”
Guy du Toit
2004
EDUCATION:
Matriculated from Pretoria Boys High School
Graduated from the University of Pretoria BA (Fine Art) Degree 1982 with a distinction in sculpture.
AWARDS:
1994
Kempton Park/Tembisa Annual Art Competition, Third Prize.
1993
FNB Vita Art Now, Overall Winner.
1990
Volkskas Atelier, Merit Award.
1989
Sol Plaatjie Sculpture Award, Sculpture Award.
1988
Volkskas Atelier, Merit Award.
International Exhibition of Miniature Art, del Bello Gallery, Toronto, Canada, Honorary Mention.
1987
Style Lighting Design Award, Lighting Award.
Hans Merensky Foundation Wood Sculpture Competition, Merit Award.
Corona del Mar Young Artist Award, Sculpture Award.
1986
Vita Art Now.
1985
Hans Merensky Foundation Wood Sculpture Competition, Joint winner with Koos den Houten.
Johannesburg Art Museum Centenary Sculpture Competition, Finalist.
1983
Emil Schweikerdt Bursary for a study tour of Europe.
1982
New Signatures, Sculpture Prize.
Honorary Mention National Fine Arts Students Exhibition, University of the Witwatersrand.
