Friends of St George’s Park, a volunteer group on a mission to take back Gqeberha’s (PE’s) historic central park is hosting the RE exhibition, featuring landscape and prophetic artist Wessel Kotzee in the park’s iconic Pearson Conservatory from November 28 to December 7.
The first-ever exhibition in the 150-year-old glasshouse will showcase a powerful body of 33 grand-scale works in oil, mixed media, pen and ink sketches, fine fibre, and installation art, all unified under the theme of restoration and rebirth.
Wessel says he is especially looking forward to engaging with visitors during an “artist walkthrough” at 11am each day of the exhibition. “I believe there is going to be such an interaction between the different kinds of people, from radical believers to absolutely non-believers — different people that will see things differently. So, I am looking forward to the questions that are going to be asked and the revelation.”
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He said that in the creative process: “You react to the things that come your way to the best of your ability. And once you finish, if necessary, it gets revealed to you, because, it’s actually for somebody else. That’s why I feel it will be a privilege for me to walk through with these people.”
“I don’t think I know what is going to be revealed through the exhibition. But I know it is rooted in hope for the city.”
To further foster community connection and re-engagement with the park, the exhibition, which is open to the public for free, will feature Sunday midday family picnics, where visitors are invited to bring a picnic basket and enjoy a relaxed, cultural afternoon at the Pearson Conservatory.
“This event is attracting so many different roleplayers, so it will be more than just an exhibit of art,” said André Theron of Friends of St George’s Park. “It’s the coming together of a community — artists, citizens, and collaborators united by a shared vision to restore and revive this historic space.”
Thanks to efforts over recent years to rejuvenate the park, it is steadily recovering a sense of being a safe and beautiful community space. The launch of a weekly Parkrun event in the park in September last year has helped to bring the public back into the area.
Wessel said when André Theron first approached him to exhibit in the conservatory he turned down the request because of safety concerns. But God showed him through various ways that he should accept the invitation — that it was a calling and his next project on “neutral soil” after his part in planting “the Face of Jesus” on a public path on the southern outskirts of the city.
One of his exhibition artworks is a painting of John Wilson, the gardener who, in 1860, was given a derelict, empty space to create St George’s Park. He said he resonated with Wilson’s vision for beautifying PE with plants and trees and was moved by a newspaper obituary he discovered in which The Eastern Province Herald described him as “the most useful citizen of Port Elizabeth”.
Wessel said he had relished the unique opportunity the exhibition gave him to express himself in “paint and plant and weave — the three things I am good at”. He said he had approached the RE theme in a fun, playful way, saturated with “covenant rainbow colours”.
In a post on the Friends of St George’s Park Facebook page, John Whitfield expands on the reason for Wessel’s deision to call his exhibition RE. He writes: “Numerous examples of RE, can be associated with this exhibition and I will share a few with you.
“REBORN, the efforts of the community to rescue both the park and the city as a whole.
“RECONNECT, the common goal has brought us together as well as linking us with our past.
“RENEW, we need to save what we have and to plan for the future.
“REJOICE, a time to appreciate what we have and the opportunity to celebrate our good fortune.
“RESTORE, both our faith in ourselves our community and the environment.
“RECLAIM, our park for all our residents to enjoy .
“REIMAGINE, thInk out the box and create a facility for future generations to enjoy.
“The RE EXHIBITION allows you to let your thoughts run freely, WESSEL has incorporated a range of mixed media, which reflect the past and the future, our industrial backbone as well as our close link to nature. Visit the exhibition and you too, will leave with a feeling of REBIRTH ,,in short you will be REINVIGORATED.”
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A MAGNIFICENT article, HOPE and LIFE and such a colouful group of individuals involved.