Brett Murray @ Everard Read Gallery, London - "Brood" Exhibition

Brett Murray: Brood

Everard Read Gallery, London

15 October – 6 November 2025

Brett Murray 

Artist portrait with sculptures 

Photo © Mike Hall 

Everard Read London presents an exhibition of bronze and marble sculptures by acclaimed South African artist, BRETT MURRAY, on the eve of major survey of his sculpture at the Norval Foundation, Cape Town, opening December 2025.

This body of work traces its origins to the start of this decade and the artist’s experience of the global pandemic. It marks what writer, Noah Swinney, describes as “an idiomatic shift in Murray’s work from polemics to elegy; a transition from what the artist has called, an accusatory position to one that is more compassionate and empathetic.” *

The sculptural forms that Brett Murray created while at home with his family during lockdown, became two deeply personal exhibitions called Limbo, which opened in 2021 and 2022, in London and Cape Town respectively. Murray’s sculptures in these shows embodied the value of family and friendship and the lived experience that, in fraught and frightening moments, our brood and brethren take precedence.

This theme extended into a related body of sculptures and reliefs for Murray’s 2024 Johannesburg exhibition, aptly titled, Brood - a reference to both family and the posture of fretting. In a world mired in conflict, uncertainty and political tumult, Brett Murray continues to reflect and express our collective need to seek solace and safety and find sanctuary in the humans to whom we are closest. “These works are not argumentative, they’re meditative,” observed art critic Graham Wood**. “They’re not subversive, they’re introspective. They’re not about intellect, they’re about emotion. They’re not about politics, they’re about relationships.”

For his London exhibition, Brett Murray continues this intimate exploration through the creatures that emerged during the bewildering time of the global pandemic, and which continue to feel acutely relevant in a time of war and global turmoil. For some of his silent, animal avatars, the world seems to weigh heavily as they gaze heavenwards with trepidation, searching for answers. Others are brooding and subdued.

Huddled together or clinging to one another, many of Murray’s sculptures convey a poignant tenderness and vulnerability. These symbols of the family unit - together, touching, protected, and protecting - strike a universal chord. While some works evoke pathos, others stoke unease and allude to an inherent violence. The hopeful is countered with gaping holes that speak to the loss and hurt that are an integral part of all human experience.

* Noah Swinney, Brett Murray, Brood: The Lost Object & The Animal Series, to be published in 2026

** Graham Wood, Financial Mail (South Africa), 15-21 February 2024

EVERARD READ LONDON

80 Fulham Road London, SW3 6HR

www.everardlondon.com

Guy Du Toit @ Everard Read, Johannesburg - "Hare Necessities" Exhibition of Bronze Sculptures

Guy Du Toit: Hare Necessities

Everard Read, Johannesburg

August 14 – September 27, 2025

Everard Read presents Hare Necessities, a new body of work by celebrated South African sculptor Guy du Toit. In this latest collection of bronze sculptures, Du Toit’s long-eared companions return not just to delight but to reflect—on love, connection, solitude, and the rituals of everyday life.

The hare, under Du Toit’s subtle and humorous hand, has long served as a mirror for our humanity. Whether curled over in thought, slow-dancing under the stars, jogging with purpose, or simply sipping wine, each figure distils a moment of presence—anchored in bronze, yet light in spirit. These hares don’t simply move through the world, they inhabit it, fully.

Some embrace, others recline in silence, one checks its phone, and another gazes at the moon. What links them is not narrative but mood, a shared sense of introspection, tenderness, and quiet joy. In a time when attention is scarce and stillness rare, Guy Du Toit offers an invitation to notice the small gestures, the pauses between actions, the beauty in simply being.

The works echo the artist’s signature style — expressive, tactile, and full of character — while offering something new: an intimacy that feels both personal and universal. As always, Du Toit’s hares are not merely animals; they are surrogates, stand-ins, and story-holders, inviting us to see ourselves in them.

Hare Necessities continues Du Toit’s longstanding exploration of form, play, and the liminal spaces of life, presenting a cast of bronze characters who, in their stillness, speak volumes.

EVERARD READ JOHANNESBURG 

6 Jellicoe Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg, 2196

www.everard-read.co.za

Artist Andrzej Urbanski @ Everard Read London - "Intersected" Exhibition

Andrzej Urbanski: Intersected

Everard Read London

10 November - 2 December 2023

Everard Read London presents an exhibition of new works by Cape Town-based artist, Andrzej Urbanski (b. 1983 in Poznan, Poland), known for his meticulous, hard-edged abstract paintings and sculpture.

Andrzej Urbanski’s source material is memory, sensory and spatial encounters as well as emotional and psychic states, all of which he deftly works into the overlapping colourful, geometric shapes and the precise, intricate forms for which he is best known.

The bold shards of colour characterising Andrzej Urbanski’s art may recall objects, places and experiences from his youth - the colour of a building or a room - or they may be a manifestation of his state of mind as he enters his studio.

In this collection, the artist presents both high and low frequency works as well as a synthesis between these modes. The result, in many of the paintings, is an animated balance between the medium frequency in his faceted forms, and high frequency in his use of colour.

Sinuous, curved edges have found their way into this new body of work - a new characteristic which the artist attributes, in part, to the experience of his becoming a father. These soft edges add visual interest and contrast, without disrupting the symmetry of Andrzej Urbanski’s creations.

The artist favours the use of spray paint as it produces flat colour and removes any trace of the ‘artist’s hand’. This conforms not only to the minimalist ethos, but also to his desire to replicate imagery that appears to be digitally generated.

Urbanski's interest in creating this illusion is rooted in his fascination with digitally-produced art, the digital tools he uses in mapping his intricate compositions and the status assigned to handmade products in the post-industrial era. It is also informed by his appreciation for the minimalist movement, although he is influenced by a range of high modernists, from Rothko to Mondrian. As art commentator Mary Corrigall observed,  “Urbanski has settled on a vocabulary and aesthetic that chimes with these times though its lines extend back in time.”

*The Cape Times (23 August, 2017)

EVERARD READ LONDON

80 Fulham Road London, SW3 6HR

www.everardlondon.com

Teresa Kutala Firmino @ Everard Read London - "Owners of the Earth IV" Exhibition

Teresa Kutala Firmino 

Owners of the Earth IV 

Everard Read London 

13 October - 4 November 2023 

Everard Read London presents an exhibition of new work by Johannesburg-based artist, TERESA KUTALA FIRMINO, with catalogue essay by architect and curator, Paula Nascimento.

This is Teresa Kutala Firmino's second solo presentation with Everard Read London, following solo exhibitions in South Africa and Berlin. Firmino's work was presented at the ARCO Lisboa art fair in 2022.

Teresa Kutala Firmino collects and curates textiles and images from magazines, newspapers, historical documents, and social media, and places them in surreal and tightly confined interiors, where the characters are free to re-enact their stories or construct new ones that challenge the accepted version of historical events. This process allows the artist to create alternative past, present and future narratives of Africa, thus rebuilding her own archive of African history.

Teresa Kutala Firmino’s seemingly playful and vibrant canvases are rich in symbolism and metaphor as they seek to explore the complex issues of identity and cultural heritage, gender violence and what it means to be a young, Black woman in the 21st century.

EVERARD READ LONDON

80 Fulham Road London, SW3 6HR

www.everardlondon.com

Blessing Ngobeni @ Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg - Skeletons at Work

Blessing Ngobeni: Skeletons at Work 

Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg 

April 17 - May 21, 2021 

“I drive through my work’s open wounds, its scars, its moods, its behavior… to mend where it is broken…” Blessing Ngobeni – 2021.

Blessing Ngobeni’s paintings are immediately identifiable; Laden with collage and painted in bold colour, his characters perform dances of ecstasy and agony across endless swathes of canvas.

Skeletons at Work is a series of three triptychs which demonstrate a crystilisation of Blessing Ngobeni’s aesthetic. In his own words, it is a series that celebrates the “technique and language that I developed… to be able to create line drawing, reminiscent of Keith Haring, without losing my artistic language.”

Blessing Ngobeni often refers to the process of stripping away the layers embedded in his work, aesthetically and conceptually, and has coined the term “skeletonising”. The process of skeletonizing leaves only the bones, the structural framework within which Ngobeni operates. This process allows Ngobeni “to track the ups and downs of moments of self-expression without offending an individualised mentality”; the graphic and confrontational content found embedded in his collage instigates a reaction from the viewer, sometimes shock and fear, sometimes laughter.

The process of skeletonizing removes the prescriptive elements of the artwork and engenders a sense of vulnerability to his characters. Blessing Ngobeni feels that “by stripping off its flesh, so it reminds us who we are inside without the colour of skin, that is a dust to my vision.” In a society where our indentity politics are being intensively scrutinized, challenged and reimagined, Blessing Ngobeni presents us with his vision of skin dissolving into dust and ask us to think about what remains – when so much of our world has been constructed around our differences.

This exhibition coincides with the launch of Chaotic Pleasure, the first published monograph on Blessing Ngobeni. The book begins with Blessing Ngobeni winning the Standard Bank Young Artist Award 2020, for the Visual Arts, and documents the body of work created for the 2020 National Arts Festival, Chaotic Pleasure. The monograph then surveys the zeniths of Blessing Ngobeni’s artistic production, highlighting outstanding works from the artist’s archive, and contextualizes his position as one of contemporary African art’s greatest living artists.

EVERARD READ

2 & 6 Jellicoe Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg, 2196

www.everard-read.co.za

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Andrzej Urbanski @ Everard Read London - AB02 833/387/18

Andrzej Urbanski - AB02 833/387/18

Everard Read London

23 February - 16 March 2018

Everard Read London presents a solo exhibition of new works by Cape Town-based artist, ANDRZEJ URBANSKI, known for his meticulous, hard-edged abstraction.

Andrzej Urbanski's work appears to be the result of an automated process; the precision of its execution gives the impression that it is generated by a detached, robotic or digital tool. His interest in creating this illusion is rooted in his fascination with digitally-produced art, the digital tools he uses in plotting his intricate compositions, the relationship between lived experience and virtual reality and the status assigned to handmade products in the post-industrial era.

It is also informed by his appreciation for the minimalist movement, although he is inspired by a range of high modernists from Rothko to Piet Mondrian.

The bold shards of colour characterising his art may recall objects, places, experiences from his youth, the colour of a building or a room, or they may encompass his state of mind as he steps into his studio. As such, his painted works are described as ‘high’ or ‘low frequency’, referring to either a complex matrix of influences shaping intricate compositions, or quieter, ‘less busy’ forms, often united by a subdued colour palette.

EVERARD READ LONDON

80 Fulham Road, London SW3 6HR

www.everardlondon.com