Bevan de Wet is an independent artist and printmaker based in Johannesburg. He graduated with a BFA with distinction from Rhodes University in 2008. From 2011-2016, Bevan worked at the Artist Proof Studio in Johannesburg as a professional print technician, collaborator, and academic facilitator. He also facilitated regular printmaking workshops at the Sharon Sampson studio. He currently works from his own print studio called Eleven Editions.
His practice centres around our increased sense of alienation from the natural environment and the spaces we inhabit, by exploring the breakdown of our ancestral values and the fragmented nature of our engagement with the world. Traversing the tensions between the organic and the constructed world, de Wet’s work is realised through etching, relief printing, papermaking and drawing. He works primarily with paper, engaging its materiality and pushing the boundaries of the surface.
Bevan has exhibited extensively, both locally and internationally, including The Other Landscape (solo, Lizamore Gallery, 2019), Drawing on Entropy (solo, Hazard Gallery, 2018), New Forms: A Study of Broken Parallels (solo, Candice Berman Gallery, 2017), Origins & Trajectories (Paris, 2016); International Printmaking Alliance Exhibition (China 2016-17). The artist’s work is held in a number of private and public collections including The Wits Art Museum, Nirox Foundation, the South African Embassy in Washington DC, Art Bank Collection South Africa, MOAD Museum of African Design, and the Ahmanson Foundation in Los Angeles.
Bevan’s awards include: the Ampersand Foundation Fellowship (New York residency 2013), the Thami Mnyele Art on Paper award 2013, the ABSA L’Atelier Merit Award 2014 (Sylt Foundation residency, Germany), and an ImpAct Award for Visual Art from the Arts and Culture Trust 2014. De Wet also attended the Cill Rialaig Artists Residency in Ireland 2017.
