A collaborative group exhibition by RESERVOIR and Untitled.

Co-curated by Selwyn Steyn and Untitled. 

Space Register presents work bridging two concepts. 

Space ranges from physical, geographical locales to innate cognitive spaces and all that is associated with the study of these: the particularities of light and atmosphere, the qualities and meaning of our built environment and the acute phenomena found in the natural world. 

Register refers to the purposeful but reactive act of recording, documenting and collating. Using artistic practice to create an imprint or register of aspects of spatiality that are often fleeting, ignored or hard to perceive.

Superimposing these ideas results in a set of works that act as shadows of the world. These works are marks, tags, reflections, maps and registers as the artist becomes the conduit, allowing the surrounding world to reveal itself.

As a starting point for Space Register, Selwyn Steyn was hugely inspired by Claude Monet’s Rouen Cathedral series (1892-1894) in which he repainted the same facade forty times during different seasons, different weather conditions and at different times of day. The subject matter is cropped and obtuse, making it clear that it was stripped of all symbolic and contextual meaning in favour of just being a surface allowing for the study of light. For this exhibition, Steyn hoped to emulate the essence of this act in a way which was specific to this particular show in the RESERVOIR space in Cape Town. But being based in France it was impossible for him to create plein-air paintings on site. He asked RESERVOIR director, Shona van der Merwe for help, to use three point and shoot disposable cameras to document the same corner in the RESERVOIR space on different occasions. The artworks were inspired by Brian Eno and the ambient music movement’s attempts to create music that is akin to atmosphere quality. The resulting paintings aim to register the vast array of changes in atmospheric quality with the subtlety of Eno and the process of Monet. The last of the three paintings was based on an overexposed photograph. For Steyn, it was a way of staying true to the fact that he could not be in the locale and embracing the use of film photography, even if not 100% effective for the task at hand. 

Through his career as a painter, Tom Cullberg has become well known for his ability to collapse the traditional dichotomy between figurative and abstract painting and identifying a space where these two vocabularies are interconnected. It is through mediating on the objects or subjects of these works and untangling the multitude of associations linked to them that the artist gains access to an abstract vocabulary. Charting territories between seemingly tangible and intangible worlds, Cullberg presents us with collections of represented objects that explore both fictitious story telling as well as real or recorded histories. Untitled White (2022) and Untitled Yellow Ochre (2021) signify a departure from his regular practice, inspired by an earlier painting by the artist of a Cape Town street scene My Past is Your Future (2019), where Cullberg started to introduce this particular geometric pattern. Using the pattern on its own in an abstract form resonated with him, alongside his “cabinet” works, to continue a dialogue between three dimensional space and the flat surface - drawing connections between physical space and its representation. 

Amber Moir’s distinctive language of abstraction is rooted in process, and has developed primarily through investigating the potential of watercolour monotype printmaking. Following an experimental and fluid process, Moir is known to explore around and beyond conventional forms of printing. For Space Register, Amber Moir presents a new piece consisting of six separately printed monotype paintings. Each ‘panel’ within this work acts as a window into an undefined expanse that has no edge and no sense of recognisable object or form. Moir was particularly preoccupied with a sense of light, moving through space, warping and converging around whatever it encounters, changing its nature as it casts shadows and illuminates. The work itself is comprised of fragments. It has had to come apart in order to come back together. Formally, the challenge was to create a single, cohesive work by paying careful attention to the motion, colour and direction in each section and how they relate to one another. The terrain being outlined is intuitive rather than logical. It is concerned with the subjective experience of space: of light, movement and sensation.   

Gathering her materials by hiking the surrounding mountains, Nozuko Madokwe processes the raw earth and combines the resultant pigment with various natural mediums to create paint. The work focuses on the interaction between land and cosmology, reflecting indigenous cultures’ understandings of space as deeply interconnected with celestial forces and ancestral ties. In her view, land becomes a register of these cosmic relationships, shaped through stories, rituals and sustainable practices. The artist’s work offers a profound meditation on space, urging us to view land as an ecosystem shaped by both cosmic and ancestral connection, creating a spiritual and moral imperative to care for the earth. 

Through his series of abstract paintings, Nkhensani Mkhari presents a palimpsest of landscape studies, a layered meditation on the village of Haenertsburg in the Magoebaskloof region. Each image, captured at dawn or dusk, is a spectral trace, a fleeting glimpse of a space perpetually in flux. The smaller satellite images, sourced from Google Maps, offer a bird’s-eye view, a cartographic counterpoint to the more intimate perspectives. The work challenges the conventional understanding of landscape as a neutral, objective representation, revealing it instead as a contested terrain, shaped by political, social, and historical forces. By examining the historiography of landscape through the lenses of art history and cultural geography, Mkhari exposes the pivotal role of landscape in the development of apartheid-era segregation. Through his works he invites us to reconsider the very concept of landscape, not only in South Africa but also globally, as a site of power, resistance, and ongoing struggle. 

Sitaara Stodel makes use of collage as her primary source of art making, and has developed a unique method often extending beyond the traditional borders of the medium. Informed by her own identity and history, Stodel recalls moving house forty times in her lifetime - including into properties her family could not afford, which resulted in regular evictions. The habit of constantly changing addresses has continued into her adult life, and finds expression in her work. Her pieces are created using found family photographs, which she collects at antique stores and markets. Through these works, Stodel curates her own memories of childhood and beyond using scenes of interiors and exteriors of houses, pets, prized home possessions, and landscapes. She also captures her own ideals of home into these scenes: fresh flowers, framed artworks, houses with sea views and shiny cars. In these collages she tears and cuts these domestic scenes in an attempt to remake memories, putting the artefacts back together using gold thread to represent the preciousness of memory. 

In this ongoing series of paintings, Kasia Stefańczyk explores her fascination with the abstract patterns created by the changing interplay of light and shadow. Capturing the movement of light through a window, her paintings are poetic depictions of the passing of time. Titled, Light Paintings, Stefańczyk describes them as “records of light as it falls through an architecture, onto a surface, on a given day, at a specific time. The paintings set out to seize the ever-changing forms generated by light as it moves across the day, onto objects and into space. In this body of work, my studio becomes the lens, a frame and my limitation.” 

m’lk is a collective founded by siblings Kutlwano, Lele and Motheo, who explore the city as a framework for various narratives. Their work is driven by a need to carve a space that communicates the particularities of their contemporary South African experiences. In this collaboration, they strive to manifest a ‘place’ that facilitates understanding and agency around aspects of society and the human experience. Dintho is a digital project that is one of these ‘places’. It was created with the intention of collectively archiving objects of material culture, particularly of marginalised parts of the global majority. Objects are scanned using mobile photogrammetry applications and published to form an open digital archive. Each archived object could potentially be a tool for moving across urban enclaves, subverting physical social orders and creating a digital ‘place’ of commoning. 

Request the exhibition catalogue and email lille@untitledart.co.za or alexandra@untitledart.co.za