Johan Thom (Johannesburg, 1976) is a contemporary South African artist who works across a variety of media including sculpture, video, performance, drawing, printmaking and photography. He is currently living and working in Pretoria and is an associate Professor in Fine Art at the Department of Visual Art, University of Pretoria.
From a narrower focus on the body in his earlier work Thom’s interest have gradually shifted to an exploration of the performative relationship between the body, materials and found objects. He has worked extensively with a broad range of found objects and materials such as wood, polyurethane foam, clay, plaster, chalk, blackboard paint and many others – often generating messy, corporeal visual forms that extend, question and animate the various forces at stake in our changing, material relationship to the surrounding world.
Solo exhibitions by Thom include Nirox Foundation (2024/5), Kalashnikovv Gallery (2023), The Goodman Gallery (2015), Nirox Project space (2014), Iwalewa Haus (2010), the Johannesburg Art Gallery (2008) and the Bag Factory (2008), amongst others. His works have also been included in group exhibitions at the Venice Biennale (2003), the Canary Islands Biennale (2006), and at the Palazzo delle Papesse (2008). He is an active presence in the art research community and has participated in conferences and workshops at the University of Pretoria (2013/14 & 15) Documenta 13 (2012), the University of Cambridge (2009), GradCam in Dublin (2010), the Finnish Academy of Fine Art (2010), the Slade School of Fine Art (2010, 2011, 2012), ‘Real Presence’ at the Venice Biennale (2005), the University of Bayreuth (2010) and many more.
In 2014 Thom completed a PhD in Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art (UCL) on a Commonwealth Scholarship. He is an Ampersand Fellow (NY) and has attended residencies in Bangladesh (Britto Arts Trust), Mexcio (Casa Wabi), Switzerland (Pro Helvetia), South Africa (Nirox Foundation 2007 & 2014) and elsewhere. He has (co)curated, developed and coordinated a number of large-scale exhibitions and artistic research projects including ‘A Research of Doing’, an Africa-UniNet funded project (2021-23) at University of Applied Arts Vienna & University of Pretoria, The Octopus Programme (Project leader Assoc. Prof Dr Basak Senova), the Potchefstroom National Arts Festival (2016-2018) and ‘New World Order’ for the Turbine Art Fair (2020) among others.
(For a more detailed listing of his bio, please click on the ‘Shortened CV’ link or follow the sub-pages below).
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