PRESS RELEASE
GARY STEPHENS | Twilight with Red Swallows
Apr 25 – May 22, 2025
GARY STEPHENS | Twilight with Red Swallows
25 April - 22 May 2025
Everard Read London presents an exhibition of new works on paper by Johannesburg-based artist, Gary Stephens.
Stephens is best known for his monumental portraits which celebrate an urban, African sense of style and fashion, manifest in the cities and communities where he has, over time, become a local. More recently, the artist has turned his attention to vibrant and magic-realist landscapes featuring acacias, aloes and quiver trees as otherworldly protagonists.
Stephens’ distinctive visual style encompasses African symbols and design, repeating patterns, collage and his signature, pleated paper which he deftly wields to create portraits and fantastical landscapes that pay homage to the vibrant culture and natural beauty of his adopted homeland.
Born in Arizona, educated in San Francisco, with long spells in Italy and artist residencies in Lagos, and now a denizen of Johannesburg for the past 15 years, Stephens brings the observant power of an outsider’s eye to his subject matter. And in this new collection, his layered works bring together his explorations into non-verbal, hypnotic visual experiences and his interest in optical effects, textile patterns, geometric repetitions, and fractured images.
Stephens’ landscapes may be whimsical and shot through with a psychedelic sensibility of the Yellow Submarine variety, but their genesis is the artist’s profound love of remote and still places. Evocative terrain like the Kalahari and the Karoo, where ancient quiver trees bear witness to the changing seasons, rare blue swallows crowd the dawn skies, and the loud whistles of crimson breasted shrikes reverberate from acacia trees.
Following an artist residency in 2024 at Tswalu nature reserve in the Kalahari, Stephens has returned to wild landscapes across southern Africa to photograph, sketch and coax creative renewal. With this new body of work, Stephens beckons us to join him on one of his magical, mystical journeys.
