VUSI KHUMALO
(b. 1951, Balfour North, Gauteng, South Africa)

Vusi Khumalo completed his basic education in Germiston, thereafter spending 10 years working in various companies in South Africa.  In 1986, whilst still working in Germiston, Khumalo felt impelled to leave South Africa, as a long standing member of the African National Congress, and so left with his family for A.N.C. camps in Zambia and Tanzania.  It was in Dakawa Camp, Tanzania, where he first had an opportunity to explore fully his life-long hobby, art. Having completed his 0-level General Certificate of Education, through correspondence with the University of London, Khumalo began to be trained and later, to teach textile printing, art and design.  This culminated in a summer course in art in the Gerlesberg Art School, Sweden, in 1991.

In 1992, Khumalo was repatriated and the Dakawa Art and Craft Community Centre was re-established in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape.  He continued to teach there and his efforts won him a one year scholarship to the Konstfack National Art College, Stockholm, where he gained a certificate in textile printing and "art".  In 1996, Dakawa’s funding from Sweden was withdrawn and Khumalo decided the time was ripe for him to dedicate himself full time to his own art.

His efforts to render the South African landscape, and particularly the burgeoning squatter communities within that landscape, were frustrated, as he found that oil painting did not bring him the intense realism that he wanted to evoke.  This led him to his startlingly real collages.  Khumalo, by reconstructing the infamous squatter camps, takes us where we might, otherwise, fear to tread and, perhaps, reminds us that behind the media facade of brutality, crime and squalor, these "growths" on our landscape are populated by human beings under trying circumstances.

Khumalo is now working as a full time artist in the Eastern Cape, where he lives with his wife, Lokhuthula and their two children.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2017
Southern Abstraction, Everard Read Gallery, London, UK

2016
Opening Gallery Exhibition, Everard Read Gallery, London, UK
Winter Collection, Everard Read Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2015
Empire, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2014
People and Places, Imibala Gallery in association with Everard Read, South Africa
Postcards from Mzansi, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2013
Possessed, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
Centenary, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2011
Small Works, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2010
View from the South, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
Khumalo, Mzimba, Dyaloyi, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2009
The City, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2008
The Wave, Chinese Cultural Exchange, Everard Read Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2007
One Man Exhibition, Portland Gallery, London, UK
Cultural Exchange, Hubei Institute, Wuhan, China 

2006
Cultural Exchange, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
Abstraction, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

2005
Solo Exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2004
One Man Exhibition, Portland Gallery, London, UK

2003
Solo Show, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

2000
October, Portland Gallery, London, UK

1998
Solo Exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

1996
Two World, Roxandra Dardagan and Skotnes Gallery, Albany Museum, Grahamstown Art Festival, South Africa
Me and Myself, Wezandla Art Gallery, Port Elizabeth Textile Art Printing and Painting, South Africa

1995
Manscape, Wezandla Gallery, Port Elizabeth, South Africa

1994
Konstfack National Art College, Stockholm, Sweden

1989-91
Touring group exhibition in Sweden and Norway

1988-91
Saba Saba National Exhibition, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

SELECTED CORPORATE COLLECTIONS
Cazenove & Co, Johannesburg
Coca Cola South Africa
Calajero
Capital Alliance Holdings
Daimler Chrysler (S.A.)
Didata, Johannesburg
E.F.T Corporation
F.B.C. Fidelity Bank
Fisher Hoffman And Sithole
Johannesburg Consolidated Investments Ltd
Mckinsey & Co (Usa)
Merril Lynch
Mvelaphanda Holdings
Old Mutual Plc (London)
Privest, Johannesburg
Sanlam
Standard Bank Investment Corporation Ltd
Telkom
Task Uk Ltd
Vusi Khumalo’s works reside in many private collections in South Africa and abroad.