Turiya Magadlela, Liza Grobler, Lyndi Sales and Michael MacGarry are amongst the many artists participating in Iziko Museum's current exhibition entitled Materiality, which is on show until the 2 August 2020.  

This exhibition explores how contemporary artists from the African continent are challenging traditional notions around materials related to art-making. Furthermore, the exhibition presents a survey of emerging and established artists who work with their materials in deliberate, surprising and innovative ways.  Materiality unpacks how artists have used materials, whether directly or indirectly, to raise questions about larger societal concerns, such as climate and environmental issues, technology, globalisation, xenophobia, religion and beauty, and how artists have engaged with materiality to guide the aesthetic experience. (Iziko Museum of South Africa, 2020).

In a progressively digitised world, honouring the materiality and physicality of an artwork is also returning to the tangible and real. The imaginative use of materials reminds us that in a time of increasing ecological challenges and decreasing natural resources, it is even more important than ever for us to re-imagine and re-contextualise the material world around us.