Pierre Fouché
We are delighted to welcome Pierre Fouché to the Maker&Smith Alumni to present lace classes in 2022.
Our first encounter with Pierre was through viewing his work at WHAT IF THE WORLD gallery and in the MATEREALITY exhibition at the National Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa, in February 2020. Pierre was then selected as a lead artist for the first Indian Ocean Craft Triennial, presented in Perth in spring 2021. He showed an ambitious installation – The Little Binche Peacock and Other Utopian Dreams, a previously commissioned work from the Spier Art Trust, and His Foam White Arms at John Curtin Gallery in the Triennial’s exhibition Curiosity & Rituals of the Everyday. This inaugural Triennial was founded and co-curated by Maker & Smith partner Carola Akindele-Obe with Jude van der Merwe and Maggie Baxter, supported by other co-founders Gerald Sanyangore and Qassim Saad.
About Pierre Fouché
Pierre Fouché (b. 1977, Pretoria) is a lacemaker/visual artist whose respect for technique, tradition, and innovation has earned him a place within the art & craft establishment as an internationally respected practitioner and teacher of contemporary bobbin lace. His practice includes traditional art media too: he is equally confident as a painter, sculptor & draftsman. A penchant for arcane media and aesthetics has led his practice to include macramé, drawn thread embroidery, encaustic painting, and pinhole photography amongst others.
Thematically, his work focuses on portraiture and the gaze, photography and representation, appropriation, and web-media cultures, as well as some forays into overt queer politics. Often informed by world art history, his desire to understand the machinery of contemporary visual cultures tends toward the Romantic. His consistent marriage of iconography with craftsmanship also contributes to this reading.
Fouché achieved his MA in Fine Arts from the University of Stellenbosch in 2006. Since then he has had 10 solo exhibitions. In 2022 he represented his craft at the Fiskars Art & Design Biennale, and in 2021 he represented South Africa at the Indian Ocean Craft Triennial in Perth. In 2018 he was the featured artist of the Andorran city of Escaldes- Engordany’s 12th Textile and Glass Symposium. Other international group exhibitions include Lace/not Lace at the Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, New Jersey; Crafted: Objects in flux at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (2018), Women’s work at the Iziko South African National Gallery (2016), as well as the touring exhibition, Queer Threads: Crafting Identity and Community, first exhibited at the Leslie + Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York (2015). His work is represented in the public collections of the Iziko South African National Gallery, The Norval Foundation, the A4 Art Foundation and the Artphilein Foundation, Switzerland.
Read about the classes that Pierre teaches in Perth (2022).
Watch and listen to Pierre’s illustrated lecture, delivered at the WA Maritime Museum on 21 October 2022.
Listen to Pierre talking with others about the history of lace-making on the Haptic and Hue podcast: The Long and Winding Road of Lace.
Visit Pierre’s website and follow him on Instagram @thelacemakersnotebook.
Pierre Fouche