Ronél De Jager’s solo show at Kalashnikovv spans two seemingly irreconcilable domains – abstraction and decoration – in so far as her paintings are pointedly concerned with the bouquet, or floral arrangement, and, as such, informed and honed through domestic design. And yet, her paintings are also abstractions, in so far as they evoke the limits of the seen, or representational. Her paintings mimic the Real yet challenge such a categorisation. This qualification – as much a riposte as it is a fluctuation – is dramatised in the way that De Jager paints. Her resistance to tangible fixities, the opacity which clouds her painterly patina, the fact that what we see is intrinsically blurred, signals a critical departure from the convention of Still Life painting, to which she alludes, yet which she betrays. This is because he canvases as not memento mori or deathly records of the symbolism of things, but dispersed filligreed lingerings of patterns, of forms, whose greater kinship lies with the inscrutability of sight, what we think we see.

De Jager’s blurred filligreed canvases evoke the ornamental, then erase it. Why? What is gained from this deliberate distortion of things? To my mind, it suggests an artwork that is more impressionistic than realistic, the art of someone drawn to miasmas – visualised worlds that quake and tremble in the face of certainty.

What does it mean that we see what we see?

Known for painting, sculpture, and installation, recently Ronél de Jager has been translating digital photographs into ambiguous markings to investigate the integrity of messaging while occupying an increasingly liminal (half physical, half digital) reality.

Objet trouve usually sees artists retrieving things from our everyday to charge them with artistic gravitas. Using found digital objects (like jpegs without copyright redtape), de Jager stretches the movement’s capacity to consider virtual realms. Through deliberate pixilation, she strips works of the detail that sets them apart. Then, only after being thrown into obscurity does de Jager use said images as references for her oil paintings.

Ronél de Jager’s chat with habitat kicks off cross-legged on her living room couch, the artist’s three-year-old daughter Nova has just had a bath and is curled up on her mother’s lap and about to go to bed. Two minutes later: Great, Nova found the puzzles in the corner cupboard.

(10 more minutes later) She’s taking a ride on their dog, Julu. Her husband is building the Lego they gave him for Father’s day and the sounds of Lego-piece-digging in a container is heard over the kazoos buzzing in the background as a layered soundtrack to muffled chattering playing off the iPad.

Ronél swears it’s a 5-minute call to bedtime...

Skilderye van ’n oordaad Blomme was in die sogenaamde Nederlandse Gone Een van die 17de eeu goedkoper as the ware Jakob – snyblomme. Boonop kon die kopers van so ’n stillere hulle jaarin en jaaruit verlustig aan ’n rojale boeket, en die nie net ten opsigte van kleur en vorm die; Botaniese aspirasies kon op dié manier ook bevredig word.

Maar meer as bloot dekoratief, met inbegrepe die spel van lig en vorm en tekstuur en wat niet al die, en daarmee saam die beliggaming van die glorie wat gekom het deur die handelsdryfvermoë van die Nederlanders, wat die gedagte van vanitas – soos verwoord in Predikers “alles kom tot niks…tot niks” – onderliggend aan dié boomstudies

Afgesien van die sukses van handelsvlote is die Goue Eeu ook deur ondersekerheid, bittere stryd en verdeling gekenmerkt. En dank het dié genré van stillewe-skilder iets van inkyk, van nadink en besin oor die vervlietendheid van die lewe beliggaam.

Dripping, dazzling colours envelope Ronél de Jager's latest body of work in her solo exhibition 'Still Here' at Kalashnikovv Gallery, which is shaped by paintings, prints and a beaded work made in collaboration with Qaqambile Bead Studio.

De Jager’s work often depicts ambiguous tapestries of flora, falling and slipping in a dark atmospheric expanse. The streaming canvases of paint and glistening compositions of beadwork explore ideas of transience.

Latitudes is your online destination to explore and buy contemporary art from Africa. With a constantly changing, curated selection of art from the continent and the diaspora, the site brings together artworks presented by galleries, curators, studios, not-for-profit organisations and independent artists themselves. The first platform of this kind dedicated to art from Africa, it is designed to help you discover creativity from the continent in a non-intimidating and accessible way.

Kalashnikovv Gallery is pleased to present 'Still Here', a solo exhibition by Ronél de Jager. Please join us for the opening of the exhibition on Saturday, 11th June from 11am to 2pm at 70 Juta Street, Braamfontein.

“She lay every morning under an avalanche of details, blissed pictures of breakfasts in Patagonia, a girl applying her foundation with a hard boiled egg, a shiba inu in Japan leaping from paw to paw to greet it’s owner, ghostly pale woman posting pictures of bruises – the world pressing closer and closer, the spiderweb of human connection grown so thick it was almost a shimmering and solid silk, and the day still not opening to her. What did it mean that she was allowed to see this?” - Patricia Lockwood, No One Is Talking About This

'Still Here' showcases Ronél de Jager’s latest body of work - paintings, prints and a beaded work made in collaboration with Qaqambile Bead Studio. De Jager contemplates the disintegrating boundaries between real and not real, and the consequent effects on our personal relationships and our relationships to ourselves. By integrating digital tools into her painting practice and remastering the Vanitas style from the 17th and 18th century Dutch masters, this body of work takes apart the pixelated life with a sensitivity that makes it poetic, even bearable.

Ronél de Jager has joined forces with a uniquely South African fine art beading studio to create a new 100 x 100 cm glass beaded piece titled 'All that Glitters... is Glass'. The project was made possible by Kalashnikovv Gallery.

The Cape Town-based Qaqambile Bead Studio, run by the dynamic trio of Mandisa Masina, Nolubabalo Kanku and Neliswa Sigwela has, since 2004, worked through the Spier Arts Trust on many collaborations with artists. The studio (previously known as Qubeka Bead Studio) specializes in translating complex brushwork into panels composed of thousands of beads. This incredible process relies on a close, synergistic working relationship between artist and master beader.

Qaqambile’s portfolio includes numerous collaborations with renowned fine artists, and its work is held in notable collections, both locally and internationally.

De Jager says of the collaboration: “I’ve had a long-held dream to work with Qaqambile, and it made perfect sense that my latest works, which have a tapestry-like feel, presented me with a great opportunity to do so. The millions of vertical brushstrokes in my oil paintings have an impressionistic aesthetic, which Qaqambile translated beautifully into glass beads. This process of decoding and re-encoding the image also added to the conceptual narrative of the work.”

“The design was exciting and extremely detailed”, says Neliswa Sigwela. “We enjoyed working on it. It was challenging and required lots of concentrating… lots of mixing colours!”

Sigwela, worked with Masina and Clayton Skiet over a period of two months to complete the work. An inaugural showing of the work will be presented by Kalashnikovv Gallery at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, from 18 - 20 February, 2022.

Kalashnikovv Gallery is pleased to announce their participation in the 2022 edition of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair.

After a hiatus brought on by Covid19 and the subsequent lockdowns- Africa’s largest contemporary art fair, Investec Cape Town Art Fair will return to its physical home, the Cape Town International Convention Centre, from Friday, 18th to Sunday 20th February 2022.

For the 9th edition, local and international art lovers will have the opportunity to engage with the art online or in person, with Investec Cape Town Art Fair offering a hybrid of both platforms.

Highlights of their presentation include a special focus on the work of Turiya Magadlela, a new beadwork collaboration between Ronél de Jager and Qaqambile Bead Studio and exhibiting new artists Xhanti Zwelendaba and Tyra Naidoo for the first time. 

Tickets are available to purchase using the link below.

Participating artists in their presentation this year include Ayanda Mabulu, Conrad Botes, Craig Smith, Isaac Zavale, Kylie Wentzel, Lazi Mathebula, Theresa-Anne Mackintosh, Lucy Jane Turpin, Michael Linders, Ronél de Jager, Turiya Magadlela, Tyra Naidoo, Yolanda Mazwana and Xhanti Zwelendaba.

For more information and to be added to the catalogue waiting list, please email the gallery at info@kalashnikovv.com

Kalashnikovv Gallery is pleased to announce their participation in Turbine Art Fair 2021.

Turbine Art Fair (TAF) is a unique South African Art fair that presents a space for the showcasing of established and new talent in an environment that is immersive, accessible and inclusive. This year, the fair will be taking place both online and in-person at 10 Fricker Road, Illovo, Sandton from 30th Sept - 3rd Oct.

Tickets are available for purchase online at https://turbineartfair.co.za/tickets.

Participating artists in their presentation includes: Ayanda Mabulu, Seth Pimentel, Maaike Bakker, Ronél de Jager, Yolanda Mazwana, Louis de Villiers, Richard Hart, Theresa-Anne Mackintosh, Erin Chaplin, Lazi Mathebula, Kylie Wentzel, Isaac Zavale, Boemo Diale, Craig Smith and Navel Seakamela.

For more information, contact the gallery at info@kalashikovv.com

The work ‘Song to Say Goodbye takes its title from the song of the same name by Placebo (Album: Meds, 2006). The painting ‘Song to Say Goodbye’ holds various levels of meaning with various personal narratives which have held significance for the artist in recent years. Many of these centre around relationships, status and symbols of wealth.

Taking as her subject flowers and using a modern digitising method, the image is at once abstract and recognisable. The result is a work which illustrates impermanence and the classical idea of vanitas — reminders of mortality and mutability.

I've recently made the decision to use Instagram Stories as the main online platform where followers have access to gain insight into my daily studio practice.

Follow my Instagram account @roneldejagerart for regular in-studio updates.

"Our homes are populated with houseplants, little domesticated slivers of nature, as we cultivate a sense of security that artificially occludes the outside world" – Ronél de Jager.

"Our homes are populated with houseplants, little domesticated slivers of nature, as we cultivate a sense of security that artificially occludes the outside world" – Ronél de Jager.

De Jager’s work recently featured on ABSA’s first online auction ‘ABSA Art Hotspot’, hosted by Aspire Art Auctions. The auction was created to assist artists during the COVID-19 pandemic and funds raised are to be shared by the 25 artists taking part; a portion will also go toward supporting the broader arts industry.

De Jager’s work ‘Aeon’ from her award-winning solo exhibition ‘Broeigrond’ fetched a significantly higher price than the estimate. Four works from this series have previously been acquired by the ABSA Art Collection, and this latest auction result has pushed this series’ value up by 40%.

In March 2020, COVID-19 forced galleries to close their doors and theatres to turn off the lights. Overnight events, performances and exhibitions were cancelled, planned work shelved and important revenue streams lost. But the arts are resilient, and projects were born that not only reflected the current situation but offered hope in a changing world.

On 11 May, the UJ Choir launched its ninth album, When the Earth Stands Still, and with it came an emotional interdisciplinary project, 'The Pandemic'. UJ Arts & Culture, a division of the Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture (FADA) at the University of Johannesburg, has invited over 25 visual artists, dancers and choreographers to each develop a new work inspired by music from the UJ Choir’s album 'When the Earth Stands Still'.

After the announcement of the national lockdown for South Africans in March 2020, De Jager’s production came to a stand-still. Many exhibition opportunities were cancelled and there was much uncertainty about the future of the art industry. De Jager’s husband, cinematographer and wildlife documentary camera-operator, Thomas Pretorius, took a job in Limpopo and the family had to temporarily relocate, resulting in de Jager’s four-month residency in Limpopo. “For once, I am in the opposing seat than everyone at home – being isolated is nothing novel to me and it has been a surreal opportunity to be able to experience nature while there is even less interaction with people. This time has allowed me complete absorption of this natural environment; interacting with wild life up-close and personal; learning about conservationist’s battle for the protection of threatened species and environmental issues affecting these species – it has truly been inspiring experience, and one I wish to incorporate into my work.”

Ronél de Jager’s work ‘When the Earth Stands Still’ is a response to a poem of the same name by Don Macdonald. Performed by the University of Johannesburg Choir, the haunting piece forms a context into which De Jager’s oil painting of destruction or regrowth fits.

Working from an image she had shot at the Bakoni Ruins in Mpumalanga while on a 2018 residency, the work evokes both stillness and trepidation, a twist on the trope of idealized African landscape paintings. Limiting her palette to luminous tones of pinks and reds reflect the fact that De Jager’s original photograph was shot in infrared; at the time, this choice explored her interest in the real versus the fictional; De Jager’s works at this time showed an anticipated future for either potential or regret. With this work, made specially for the ‘Pandemic’ exhibition, the imagery took on another dimension of meaning.

De Jager’s production has come to a halt, with the cancellation of many planned exhibition opportunities. The uncertainty in the industry affects us all. One such opportunity is the annual KKNK Festival which is held annually.

During this time De Jager reverted to working on her website allowing to work remotely.

The work 'Deadline’ is conceptualised to stand on the gallery floor.

It formed part of the group exhibition 'Knowingly Wasting Time', at No End Contemporary (Feb 2020). The title of the show prompts the exploration of the time-intensive nature of painting as a medium, and the notion that time is itself a ‘medium’, a part of the painting process.

The show invited artists to expose the layers of time evident in the process, and to differentiate between the notion of time wasted and the importance of wasted time as required by the medium.

In response to the invitation to take part in this exhibition, De Jager responded with the work 'Deadline'. The exhibition subsequently came to a halt due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Despite the disappointment associated with the cancellation, De Jager found the title of the show and the work to be apt.

In ‘Green’, the image of a greenhouse is rendered with loose, impressionistic brushwork; the marks of paint appear to have been dragged vertically, creating a sense of movement and instability. This disturbance is at odds with the image of growth and nurturance. De Jager speaks of the greenhouse interior being a space of comfort and growth, but also as a space of entrapment in artificial conditions.

There is also an added dimension in the fact that life in Johannesburg, De Jager’s home city, can often echo the concept of a greenhouse. Widespread concerns about safety keep many housebound, as a near-agoraphobic fear of lived experiences outside our gates paralyses us. Our homes are populated with houseplants, little domesticated slivers of nature, as we cultivate a sense of security that artificially occludes the outside world.

In January 2020, De Jager was commissioned to make a work for the Edgars chain store to use in their rebranding campaign of 2020.

The campaign was to feature the work of South African artists who contribute to and reflect on the current local culture. Their brief was to use the Winter 2020 fashion trends, and incorporate the winter colour palette, and to then deconstruct these to represent what fashion means in our South African context.

In the oil painting, ‘Unravel’, De Jager responded to this brief by referencing the work of the 17th and 18th Century Dutch old masters’ still life paintings of flower arrangements, connecting her interest in the abstraction of memory to a broader art historical context. Using a modern, digitising method as a reference, De Jager’s work for this brief is at once abstract and recognisable. The result is a work which illustrates impermanence and the classical idea of vanitas—reminders of mortality and mutability.

The South African-owned chain has long shown a deep appreciation for and support of art and artists. In keeping with this, for 2020, De Jager's painting 'Veil II' has been acquired by their collection and selected to be featured on the franchise’s menu in the UK.

A little-known fact is that, with over 9,000 pieces of art in the UK alone, Nando’s houses one of the largest collections of African art in the world. Each restaurant essentially doubles as a gallery, giving exposure to the amazing work of Southern African artists from the restaurant chain’s country of origin.

As patrons of many young contemporary Southern African artists, Nando’s support different initiatives to cultivate the continent’s art sector and, having partnered with Spier Arts Trust, Nando’s has been part of career development opportunities for emerging artists for many years.

In 2017 De Jager won the award for best visual art exhibition at KKNK National Arts Festival. This was a multidisciplinary exhibition which included her painting series ‘Aeon’.

In this series of works, the artist constructs fictionalised landscapes which oscillate between the familiar and the alien; the works present fertile landscapes with an energy potential, at the cusp of its revelation; they incubate our imagined future, thoughts and potential regrets. Beginning as a photographic process of experimentation, De Jager used infrared photography to investigate the characteristics of the landscape. These images are painted as part of a meditative process of ‘searching’, contemplating these notions of latent landscapes.

Like a heat seeker, the infrared photography analyses its components, tapping into magnetic fields which the human eye cannot detect. The results provide us some kind of alternative universe where we may see these energetic fields and imagined futures through the landscape. The series considers time and space and play on the notions of memory as transcendental, ephemeral and intangible.

A selection of De Jager’s ‘Aeon’ series was acquired by ABSA, adding her work to a collection of South African art luminaries. The ABSA collection is one of the most enviable corporate collections on the continent, proving the brand’s commitment to South African contemporary art and artists.

The South African chain started collecting art in partnership with arts consultancy Spier Arts Trust in 2001 and has since become owner of the world's largest collection of Southern African contemporary art and design. The collection is designed to support regional artists, create unique spaces for restaurant customers, and make investments that should gain value over time, according to the chain.

After an eight-month maternity production break, De Jager has been invited to join the Bag Factory Artist’s Studio’s in Newtown, Johannesburg, for a four month residency concluding in January 2020.

The Bag Factory is a non-profit contemporary visual art organisation which provides studio space to a cross-generational community of Johannesburg-based artists. All their programmes are accompanied by a public programme that encourages greater understanding of contemporary visual art and stimulates interaction between artists and the local community. Affiliated with the international Triangle Network.

With a pioneering 30-year history of providing a supportive infrastructure for artists, the Bag Factory is unique in combining art making with cultural debate and art exhibitions, thereby creating a fertile international environment for experimentation, innovation and cultural dialogue between creatives in South Africa and the rest of the world.

The Bag Factory’s crucial role for the arts in South Africa is confirmed by their long list of celebrated alumni who have gone on to develop international and prize-winning careers. They include our co-founder David Koloane, Sam Nhlengethwa, Kagiso Patrick Mautloa, Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi, Bongi Dhlomo-Mautloa, as well as Penny Siopis, Tracey Rose, Kendell Geers, Gabi Ngcobo, Lady Skollie, Blessing Ngobeni and Bronwyn Katz.

De Jager’s painting ‘Blooming New Neighbours’ was produced after her home and studio relocation in July 2018 to a leafy suburb in Johannesburg. The work comments on her trepidation and, at times frustration in dealing with the new suburban environment and community. While making the work, De Jager became aware of the three metre-high walls that auger one’s entrance to the suburb. Her work reflected the fact that suburban homes are often conceptualised as guarded islands and disguised prisons; at the same time, she was thinking about how the home interiors take on the characters of the people who inhabit them.

The work was acquired by Hollard in September 2018 and has recently been relocated to their headquarters in Australia. It is somewhat ironic that many of De Jager’s new neighbours are themselves in the process of relocating from Johannesburg, immigrating to find greener postures elsewhere as fear of crime and danger renders many near-agoraphobic.

First Rand Bank has commissioned two ‘Citizen of Glass’ sculptures for their CEO offices at Merchant place, Sandton, Johannesburg. This commission followed after De Jager won the KANNA Award for best visual art exhibition at the KKNK National Arts Festival in 2017.

The bank holds a diverse collection of South African art, much of which has been collected over a period of time. “Our Corporate collection is a repository of history and value. It enables us to see a cultural richness across time and is a gift to those who share in it – including our employees and all our clients. But we also see it as our way of preserving our history for the opportunity to learn across boundaries – be they racial, social or historical.” said RMB’s Chief Risk Officer Gert Kruger.

De Jager’s first five-work sculpture series ‘Citizen of Glass’ was first produced in collaboration with the Johannesburg based glass blowing studio, Molten Glass in 2017 for her second solo exhibition ‘Broeigrond: Fertile Ground for Golden Regrets’.

The influence which ‘Citizen of Glass' exerted over De Jager’s work has not abated. In the darkened room of the ‘Broeigrond…' exhibition, the interplay between the materials and light, the immersive aptitudes, hidden in the work when shadows co-opted the viewers and cast them not only as a participant but a component of the work, meant that further exploration and development of this body of work was a certainty.

In August 2018 De Jager visited Ngwenya Glass in Eswatini to collaborate on this new dimension of the project. Together with master glass blowers James Magahula, Isaac Mamba, Nathi Shongwe, Hope and Chas Prettejohn, 14 glass bubbles were blown for the individual components of the work.

Ngwenya Glass crafts their products from 100% recycled glass, and their glass-blowing studio houses the largest glass furnaces in Africa. These factors informed De Jager’s decision to collaborate with the studio on this next phase of this project. Using a ‘free-blowing’ glass forming technique allowed the team to experiment with larger and more irregular shapes and sizes than De Jager’s previous five-vessel series. During the molten phase, Karoo soil is embedded in the molten glass to create ‘impurities’ which are invisible to the eye when viewing the vessel from up-close. These microscopic beads of impurities behave like raindrops; bending, refracting, reflecting a cosmic show of scattering light. The soil is invisible, but present. It is pure vision masquerading as matter; the works are a reminder that all appearances are determined by a relationship between subject, light, and space.

Coinciding with De Jager’s studio relocation in June 2018, the artist will be taking a production break for a period of three months to enable her to welcome her new baby to the family. Her new studio will be situated in Parkview, Johannesburg.

In a style that suggests the analytical quality of X-rays and infrared photography, Ronél de Jager’s series ‘Forsaken Garden’ explores images of overgrown plants in the domestic space. Through these works, her intention was to honour her home and studio space, a classical, early-19th century home that was demolished, the site on which it stood turned ignominiously into a parking lot.

De Jager regards this space as one that has seen many challenges and milestones since the start of her full-time career in 2009. For this small series, she drew inspiration from Algernon Charles Swinburne's poem, “A Forsaken Garden”, in which the poet presents a meditation, not on a particular landscape per se, but on time, death and immortality.

In a comparable way, De Jager’s sensitivity to time, and her ability to slow it down through the painting process but also halt it as one stands in front of her work aims at the transcendental. Devoid of human inhabitants, the landscapes in these paintings speak to a sense of loss and desolation. 

In her own way, De Jager pays homage, by creating a final collection of paintings painted in this space.

This series also stood as a departure point in de Jager’s technical approach to painting, perhaps also due to the imminent change in studio environment. De Jager began working with vertical brushstrokes, dragging her pigment as if to suggest movement.

According to Walter Benjamin – cultural critic, essayist and German Jewish philosopher – “for the Romantics, and for speculative philosophy, to be critical meant to elevate thinking so far beyond all restrictive conditions that the knowledges of truth sprang forth magically, as it were, from insight into the falsehood of these restrictions”.

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Alexia Vogel’s art is pretty. It’s not only the pink-toned palette that lends her painting this quality but also her style and subject matter. Mountains, valleys, rivers and other bucolic settings are her focus, which she renders in a soft, floaty manner. Since conceptualism fell out of favour, painting has been revived and art has increasingly become "prettier".

Myopia, a two-woman exhibition by Mandy Coppes-Martin and Ronél De Jager, queries our myopic lens and global mindsets on environmental issues through a series of mixed media works, examining beautiful and precarious seascapes and landscapes.

“In his book Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell describes a double-speak totalitarian state where most of the population accepts ‘the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them’……The world not imagined is the one that now exists” - Ian Dunlop, The Guardian (2017)

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Sedert die Franse sosioloog Émile Durkheim "heilig en onheilig" as 'n wesenseienskap van godsdiesn, loop die begrip 'sacred and profane' mank aan dié bagasie. Dikwils, en ten onregte, word dié begrip simplisties verklaar as iets soos 'n spanning tussen goed en kwaad.

We don't know where we are, or where we are headed. You probably had some idea of this limbo state of affairs that defines our current condition, not only locally, but globally in this age of accelerated technological development of political and religious extremism.

These changes have delivered humanity at a crossroads or perhaps on the cusp of transitions we have yet to fully understand.

De Jager’s first five-work sculpture series ‘Citizen of Glass: Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn & Mercury’ was acquired by the Hollard Art Collection in July 2017. This permanent installation is housed by The Pines building in Parktown and hangs in the dining room of the recently-restored 1906 heritage building created for a bachelor and enlarged for PM Anderson by Gordon Leith.

The Pines collection boasts works by South Africa’s most established contemporary artists such as William Kentridge, Sam Nhlengethwa, Conrad Botes, Penny Siopis, Mbongeni Buthelezi, Willem Boshoff, Lyndi Sales amongst many more.

The collection allows visitors to view the collection and heritage sites of Parktown by appointment, and special walking tours with the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation are arranged on a quarterly basis.

The works on show explore a range of processes that draw on ideas and interpretations of the Sacred and the Profane. It stems from the need of every era to reinvent “spirituality” for itself. Art has the potential to lead us to a place of vision that unites the material and ethereal worlds. Human experience has the possibility to be ordered by the sacred and to create fundamental meaning in the world.

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The KANNAs, which annually rewards creative excellence at the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees, announced their 2017 winners at a ceremony held at Nasdak, Media24 in Cape Town on Monday, 15 May 2017.

Each winner of this year’s KANNA Award received a trophy commissioned by artist Danélle Janse van Rensburg and a cash prize. A total prize money of R160,000 was awarded, sponsored by Media24, ATKV, NATi, Arts Unlimited, ABSA, Huisgenoot, SARIE, Castle Lager and Ton and Anet Vosloo.

Acknowledged for her efforts, Ronél De Jager was awarded a KANNA for Best Visual Art Exhibition with the solo exhibition 'Broeigrond: Fertile ground for Golden Regrets'.

‘Broeigrond: Fertile Ground for Golden Regrets’ is a multidisciplinary exhibition by Ronél de Jager, inspired by the Karoo landscape, geology, infrared photographic process and cosmology. 
In this series of works, the artist constructs fictionalised landscapes which oscillate between the familiar and the alien; De Jager constructs artefacts of paintings, light-boxes, glass orbs with brass and copper electroplated flora and time-lapse film gathered from previous expeditions in the Karoo. 

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Influenced by her experimentation with infrared photography and how we see and perceive light, time and the transcendental, De Jager creates interplay between the real and surreal. In a cathartic process of retelling, De Jager layers paint in a spectrum of luminous tones to distance the viewer from the original image, mediating a portal through time and space.

It is this very mediation between photography to paint where de Jager actively teleports her viewer, from action to memory. The once still landscape seems disturbed, disrupted by some kind of alteration; transforming the dry, seasoned winter trees into something fictional.

‘Ek probeer oomblikke van stilte, van beweging, oorgang en verandering in my skilderye registreer’

Hoewel Ronél de Jager haar nie tot een medium laat beperk nie – sy werk ook gemaklik in installasiekuns, fotografie en video – is dit haar skilderwerk wat fassineer, juis vanweë haar multidissiplinêre benadering tot skilder.

Soos wat camera obscura, later stilfotografie en nog later die rolprentkamera ’n onuitwisbare invloed op skilderwerk gehad het, so raak ’n mens die afgelope paar dekades van die invloed van video en digitale media bewus. Afgesien van die bewegende beeld is dit die vermoë om te kan “pause” eerder as om te “stop”, om te kan “fast forward” en bowenal om in stadige beweging pieksel vir pieksel te kan betrag, wat in skilderwerk neerslag vind.

De Jager benut dié tegniese moontlikhede in haar skilderye, maar benader skilder boonop met die oog en hart van ’n installasiekunstenaar.

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