MATTHEW HINDLEY
(1974 - 2025 Cape Town, South Africa)

One of South Africa's most recognised contemporary painters, Matthew Hindley’s intense, poetic and delving artworks featured in various seminal South African and international exhibitions. With a series of solo exhibitions charting his trajectory from figuration to abstraction and back again, Hindley fully engaged the sensational capabilities of both, pushing every centimetre of his surfaces in order to stimulate the full spectrum of experiential reaction, while searching for his own uniquely recognisable voice within the idiom.

Hindley’s process relied on the raw building blocks that classically make up a painting: line, colour and form. He explored each of these formal aspects, while encouraging paint to be paint, inventing and developing an expanding array of applications. His later work, focusing on physical dimensionality and light and shade, explored with an almost childlike wonder the possibilities of paint. Hindley presented an exuberant experience celebrating the formal aspects of abstract painting while also revealing the richness of his adaptive and transformative practice.

Hindley presented a short film at the world renowned Eli and Edythe Broad Museum, Michigan and the Kochi Muziris Biennale, India (2012). In 2015 he worked on a series of paintings inspired by the mythological African tales of South African writer Don Mattera, for a book published by Rhodeworks in Berlin, Germany. In 2015 his artwork was part of the imago mundi Benetton Collection at the Venice Biennale. Also in that year, Hindley participated in TWENTY: Contemporary art from South Africa, which travelled from Turchin Centre for the Visual Arts, North Carolina, to the Beijing Biennale, China. In early 2019, his major public sculpture Speak Naturally and Continuously was upgraded and reinstalled above the entrance of the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa. In 2021, Hindley was included in the survey show National Identity at the ESPRONCEDA Institute of Art and Culture in Barcelona, Spain, alongside other acclaimed South African artists, including William Kentridge and Zanele Muholi.

Hindley maintained an interest in the possibilities of science to produce art, expressed in a number of key works. His engagement with technology inserted an interactive realm of vision and experience. This reactivity to the present physical world is a typical feature of Hindley’s new media projects, such as Speak naturally and continuously. The work, displayed above the entrance of the Iziko South African National Gallery, listened to conversations in the gallery atrium, translating them into a dadaistic and poetic stream of text that runs live across a dot matrix screen.

Other examples of his interaction with technology are his electronic paintings, where a camera in the frame feeds projections through a translucent abstracted surface, creating a living portrait. As the scenes in front of the camera constantly shift, so does the image, and the viewer is confronted with the landscapes of their own contemporary existence.

The optical functioning of the electronic works also references Hindley’s series of rainbow paintings through their mutual foundation in the splitting of light into a prism, allowing his love of paint to connect to the contemporary technological era. ‘The rainbow is the expression of the infinite possibilities of colour,’ Hindley explained. ‘To the artist, it’s the basis of the colour palette itself. The dispersal of white light into its component colours offers a kind of unlocking, a window into a miraculous world.’

Matthew Hindley graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town, in 2002. He was awarded the Michaelis Prize for the best final exhibition in his year. He lived and worked in Cape Town.

EDUCATION

2002
Bachelor of Fine Arts, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2023
Memoryscapes, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa

2021
Double Rainbow, Knysna Fine Art, Knysna, South Africa

2019
The Brush Itself Incites, Vault Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2018
The Divided Self, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
Survey of Risk, David Krut, Johannesburg, South Africa

2017
A Selection of Works, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

2015
Resurrection (Der Brennende Wald), Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
The Five Magic Pebbles & other stories (by Don Mattera), David Krut Projects, Cape Town, South Africa

2013
Twilight of the Idols, Biksady Galeria, Budapest, Hungary

2012
One Pearl of Great Price, VOLTA8, Basel, Switzerland

2011
The Solo Project, Basel, Switzerland
An Everlasting Once, Brundyn+, Cape Town, South Africa

2009
Like, like, like, like a Circus, Brundyn+ Wembley Project Space, Cape Town, South Africa
Black Out, Brundyn+, Cape Town, South Africa

2007
Private Vernissage (with Kromschröder & Pfannenschmidt), Berlin, Germany

2006
Before My Time, 34Long, Cape Town, South Africa

2005
Speak Naturally & Continuously, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2004
Klein Karoo National Arts Festival, Oudtshoorn, South Africa
Surrender, Bell-Roberts Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2025
We the People: 30 years of democracy in South Africa, Norval Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa
Matter Matters, Everard Read, London, UK

2024
Inner Sanctum, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa
Winter Collection, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa
Southern Light, Everard Read, London, UK

2023
What I Feel When I Think About The Cosmos, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa
Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
Collide, Featherstone Centre for the Arts, Massachusetts, USA
What I feel when I think about the cosmos, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa

2022
Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
Pop-Up, Atelier Louis & Artloft, Hasselt, Belgium
Spring, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa
Things I’d like to remember, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2021
National Identity, ESPRONCEDA Institute of Art and Culture, Barcelona, Spain
Summer 2021, Everard Read, London, UK
Offering, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa
In Conversation, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
Oasis, 25th Anniversary Exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2020
Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
IMAGO, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa
TINY2020, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa
Journeys of the Mind, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa
Staring Straight to the Future, Everard Read, South Africa & UK
Finer Things, Knysna Fine Art, Knysna, South Africa

2019
Filling in the Gaps, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
Self, Gallery at Glen Carlou, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Context Art Miami, with Everard Read, Miami, USA

2018
Summer, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
People & Portraiture, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2017
FNB Joburg Art Fair, with Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa
Winter Collection, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
Turbine Art Fair with 50ty/50ty, Johannesburg, South Africa

2016
365 Days of Projects & Collaborations, David Krut, Johannesburg, South Africa
AKAA Art Fair, with Everard Read, Paris, France
FNB JOBURG Art Fair, David Krut Projects, Johannesburg, South Africa
Inch x Inch, David Krut Projects, Johannesburg, South Africa
Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
Nocturne, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2015
Homage, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
Empire, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
Imago Mundi - Map of New Art, Benetton Collection, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice Biennale, Italy
TWENTY: Contemporary Art from South Africa, Turchin, Centre for the Visual Arts, Appalachian State University, North Carolina, USA; Beijing Biennale, China

2013
Material/Representation, Brundyn+, Cape Town, South Africa

2012
Collateral Segment - BRICS, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi, India
Global Groove, Eli & Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan, USA

2010
Spier Contemporary Biennial, Cape Town, South Africa

2009
Dada South, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2007
South African Art, Danubiana Art Museum, Bratislava, Hungary

2005
Videobrazil, WWWF Anthology Performance, Brazil

2004
A Decade of Democracy: Witnessing South Africa, National Center for African American Arts, Boston, USA

2003
On the road again, Engler & Piper Projekte, Berlin, Germany
MTN New Contemporaries, Museum Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa

2002
In no particular order (vol.1), 16th Rencontres Video Art Plastique, Normandy, France

2001
World Wide Video festival, Arti et Amicae, Amsterdam, Netherlands

AWARDS

2005
Winner of the permanent public art installation competition, Iziko South African National Gallery

2002
Michaelis Prize, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa

2002
Simon Gershin prize, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa

1994
Irma Stern prize, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

Vass László Collection, Veszprém, Hungary
Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
University of Cape Town Collection, Cape Town, South Africa
Cuvee Collection, South Africa

PUBLICATIONS

2018
The Divided Self, Everard Read

2014
Artwork for The Five Magic Pebbles, and other stories written by Don Mattera, published by Rhodeworks, Berlin

2004
A Decade of Democracy: South African Art 1994-2004, edited by Emma Bedford, published by the Iziko Museums of Cape Town, Iziko South African National Gallery