Remember about mountains: What they are made of is not what made them
Group exhibition at Reservoir
13 August - 25 September 2026
Presented alongside Inga Somdyala, Bulumko Mbete, and Xhanti Zwelendaba and Ben Stanwix.
And from afar, Dale Lawrence's three speaker panels—coated in animal fat, wax, resin, ash—play back new densities and chatter. For 'Singing Along from Up Above', 'Like Nothing Ever Happened', and 'This Thin Layer' (all 2026), Lawrence mines Reddit threads, John Berger’s ‘Pig Earth’, Liao Yiwu's ‘The Corpse Walker’, the leaks of declassified CIA files that note the ideological borders of the Cold War, and more. He automates narrations thereof, and tunes the scrambled discord and incidental sounds—hums, buzzes, interference typically rejected. Amplified through the tallow, these frequencies become a texture rather than semantic. They loop and form irregularities akin to his process of repeatedly brushing the material mix until it compounds into dense surfaces somewhere between image and substance, resembling something biological and geological all at once: foam, gabbro, and bacteria. The works seem both wet and brittle, ambiguous in undifferentiated sensory fields. A collapse of ancient and new materials into a spectrum of the living, geological, meteorological, and technological, as both a buffer and a sieve, ingested.
Excerpt of text by Nathalie Viruly
Like nothing ever happened, 2026
Cow fat, veldfire ash, encaustic, transducer, amplifier, audio player, single-channel audio
Declassified cold-war era CIA documents comparing American and Russian consumption (‘Americans eat more meat and fish…’), Youtube comments (search “you are”) (‘A distant dream’), Ben Okri’s The Famished Road (‘Filtering through the walls’), audio recordings aboard Foshan Metro Line 3, veldfire ash from Table Mountain National Park (Silvermine section) 2025
This thin layer, 2026
Cow fat, veldfire ash, encaustic, transducer, amplifier, audio player, single-channel audio
Declassified CIA documents containing remote viewing transcripts’ from project “Grill Flame”, audio recordings of the Palmiet River, veldfire ash from Table Mountain National Park (Silvermine section) 2025
Singing along from up above, 2026
Cow fat, veldfire ash, encaustic, transducer, amplifier, audio player, single-channel audio
Youtube comments (search “be”), audio recordings from No. 142 Huagui Road, Guangzhou, veldfire ash from Table Mountain National Park (Silvermine section) 2025
Roadcuts
WHATIFTHEWORLD at MiArt, 2026
Reservoir at Latutudes Art Fair and Investec Cape Town Art Fair, 2026
Iziko South African National Gallery, in Matereality V2, a group exhibition curated by Andrea Lewis, 2026
Naked knees
Extracts of "The Spell of the Sensuous" by David Abram, Digital Prints on Paper, Epoxy
Sometimes I try to pray
Extracts of "Pig Earth" by John Berger, Digital Prints on Paper, Epoxy
Somebody someday
YouTube Comments (search “be”), Digital Prints on Paper, Epoxy
Filtering through the walls
Extracts of "The Famished Road" by Ben Okri, Digital Prints on Paper, Epoxy
When you were
CIA remote viewing transcripts, digital prints on paper, epoxy
Over the outwash plain, 2024
in four parts: Steakhouse, Iver singing in the bath, Rain on Woolley’s Pool, In the garden
Four-channel audio, cow fat, veldfire ash
▶︎ Play audio
Signs of the Future, 2024
Birds with Sea, 2024
Digital prints on paper, epoxy
This is a Beautiful Picture of a Japanese Tree, pt.I & II
Fallow Ground
06 October 2024—11 January 2025
A group exhibition at Spaced Out, Gut Kerkow
curated by Reservoir, Cape Town and PSM, Berlin
Herbal inhaler to cure depression, 2024
M-150 pressure machine formula, 2024
M-150 engine formula, 2024
I mean, of course, 2024
Product label translations, digital prints on paper, epoxy
Excerpts of ‘Against Interpretation’ by Susan Sontag, digital prints on paper, epoxy
ICTAF 2024
presented by Reservoir
alongside Alexandra Karakashian and Bella Knemeyer
A Lot of Time, A Lot of Pressure, 2024
Clear packaging tape, ‘Survivor’ episode transcripts, digital print on paper
A Lot to Unpack Here, A Lot of Weird Dreams, 2024
Clear packaging tape, clickbait articles, digital prints on paper
Roadcuts (240115; 240121; 240205), 2024
Clear packaging tape
Midden
28 Oct.—2 Dec. 2023
WHATIFTHEWORLD
VIEW EXHIBITION︎︎︎
⚆ exhibition text by Shona van der Merwe
Between Lives, 2023
Watch here ⦿
Read text by Sean O’Toole ☛
Artissima, 2023
presented by Reservoir
alongside Inga Somdyala
You Do Not Know, 2023
I Do Not Know, 2023
Digital prints on paper, epoxy
Ends and Beginnings (Mountain Fire, Cape Town, 22.06.08), 2023
Cow fat and veldfire ash
Garbage Projector, 2022
Video (44:15) displayed on a discarded projector found on the streets of Philadelphia, PA, ink on paper
Infrastructure, RAW Académie, ICA Philadelphia, directed by Linda Goode Bryant
March 16–May 22, 2022
The Mobile Museum, 2022
(w/Baptiste Manet, Matthias Mushinski and Chantal Vorobei Thieves)
More ➝
Permanent Collection, 2022
Peep hole drilled into the gallery wall at ICA, Philadelphia (drawings by museum staff, past and present), ink on paper
Peep hole drilled into the gallery wall at ICA, Philadelphia (drawings by museum staff, past and present), ink on paper
There is an exhibition behind these walls
It is not open to the public and you are not allowed to see it
It is the only permanent display here
and it contains the only artworks that can be said
to be in the museum’s permanent collection
It is not open to the public and you are not allowed to see it
It is the only permanent display here
and it contains the only artworks that can be said
to be in the museum’s permanent collection
⚆ exhibition text by Sean O’Toole
Ends and Beginnings (after the fire that burnt a library), 2021
Cow fat and veldfire ash
Cow fat and veldfire ash
I must apologise, I would have preferred
to present to you an empty room
with no art and unimportant walls
at a time when this would have sufficed
because no art was needed. When
I had nothing to say, though you
were still listening
There were no issues to address
and there was no need for exchange
You were not searching
I was not selling anything
Everything that needed to be said
had been said
Everything that needed to be done
had been done
to present to you an empty room
with no art and unimportant walls
at a time when this would have sufficed
because no art was needed. When
I had nothing to say, though you
were still listening
There were no issues to address
and there was no need for exchange
You were not searching
I was not selling anything
Everything that needed to be said
had been said
Everything that needed to be done
had been done
Relief on Hospital Floor with Serving Spoon, 2021
hand-pressed relief on paper
Keeping Up Appearances: 2021.12.17
hand-pressed relief on paper
Carve Until There Is Nothing Left, 2021-22
hand-pressed relief on paper
hand-pressed relief on paper
Lockdown Monotypes, 2020-21
With no access to supplies
Make a monotype every day using tools at hand
palette knife, knife and fork, credit card
dishwashing gloves, tissue, packet
Construct the image spontaneously
Don’t plan ahead
Don’t assess the result
Mark each piece with the number of the day
Make a monotype every day using tools at hand
palette knife, knife and fork, credit card
dishwashing gloves, tissue, packet
Construct the image spontaneously
Don’t plan ahead
Don’t assess the result
Mark each piece with the number of the day
View ⇶
Seen and Not Seen, 2019
Performance with bathtub, water, soap, cotton towel, cotton bathmat, towel rail, soap dish, 155 x 200 x 150cm, duration: 39 days
Performance with bathtub, water, soap, cotton towel, cotton bathmat, towel rail, soap dish, 155 x 200 x 150cm, duration: 39 days
Install a bath in the gallery.
Bathe only there for the duration of the exhibition.
Don’t change the water.
Photograph the bath mat every day.
Bathe only there for the duration of the exhibition.
Don’t change the water.
Photograph the bath mat every day.
Tragedy of the Rainbow Warriors (after Jannis Kounellis and Francois Pienaar), 2021
Chip packets, coat rack, Springbok supporters jerseys, shelf, paraffin lamp
Chip packets, coat rack, Springbok supporters jerseys, shelf, paraffin lamp
Serra’s List, Revised, 2018-21
Ink on paper
Ink on paper
Waste Management, 2017
Linocut on paper, monotype on paper, glue
Linocut on paper, monotype on paper, glue
Linocuts and monotypes, taken from my archive, torn into strips and assembled to form a stack.
Rocking Chair, 2016
Linocut on paper
Linocut on paper
Folding Underwear, Ironing T-shirts, Making Work, 2016
Linocuts on paper
Linocuts on paper
The Ever-flowing Tide, 2010 More ⤑