An exhibition by Pierre Fouché is currently on display at the Old Wine Cellar at the historic Stellenbosch wine farm Spier.
Entitled The Seas and all will part, Expire, opened on Friday 16 September and can be viewed until Sunday 27 November, with a meet-the-artist session scheduled for 15:00 on Friday 25 November.
Fouché is an internationally respected lacemaker and is already a farm favourite at Spier with his beautifully detailed lacework having inspired the creation of Spier’s These Waves range of wines. Although he is a contemporary artist, Fouché frequently finds his creative spark from the past to produce something completely new.
His featured piece of the The Seas and all will part, Expire showing is “The Little Binche Peacock”, which re-imagines a famous work of fine linen lace that dates back to the 18th century and was made using the traditional Binche technique.
It was during his artist residency in Switzerland in 2014 that Fouché first encountered the Binche technique, and it left a lasting mark. Born in Pretoria, educated in Stellenbosch and exhibited in several countries internationally, Fouché explores the unknown, which has led him to obscure practices and techniques such as macramé, drawn thread embroidery, encaustic painting, and pinhole photography.
The exhibition also includes a large-scale rope-work diorama of an abstract landscape, “The Lord Himself Among Us” and “His Foam White Arms”. Visitors will also see Fouché’s use of Morse code to share poetry by novelist and explorer Crosbie Garstin, which tells the story of a sailor who is tragically seduced by the sea.
