PRESS RELEASE
LIZA GROBLER | WHERE SHOOTING STARS LIE
Mar 5 – Mar 31, 2026
LIZA GROBLER
Where shooting stars lie
5 March - 31 March 2026
Everard Read Cape Town
3 Portswood Rd, V&A Waterfront
Opening Reception: Thursday, 5 March at 6pm.
A shooting star travels through deep space only to arrive as stone - its brilliance brief, its material ordinary. ‘Where Shooting Stars Lie’ considers how value is formed through connection, friction and time.
The exhibition lingers in that shift: how spectacle settles into matter, and how matter gathers meaning.
The work presents splices of Klein Karoo spaces as atmospheric and distilled colour fields. Embedded within fibre surfaces are ostrich eggshell beads, historically used in Southern Africa as relational currency. Small and tactile, the bead condenses ancestral time, labour and exchange - interrupting abstraction with locality and tactility.
A significant fibre work produced from agave silk introduces another temporal layer. Though alien to the prehistoric Karoo, the agave (or ‘garingboom’ / ‘thread tree’) has become embedded in the landscape over the past couple hundred of years thanks to humans crisscrossing the surface of the planet from North to South. Farmers use the leaves to sustain livestock during spells of drought. It speaks to adaptation and endurance - to how what is foreign becomes necessary and how what survives friction becomes embedded.
Across painting, fibre, craft processes and modest materials, the work collapses scale. Cosmic time meets drought time; celestial fall meets ground-level exchange. What appears as abstract is locally grounded - materially, geographically, historically.
The shooting star does not vanish. It lies resting within the landscape, within fibre, within touch. Luminous not for its spectacle, but for its capacity to transform the everyday.
Follow the magic...
__________
After many years of living in Cape Town city centre, Liza Grobler now resides in Oudtshoorn in the Klein Karoo. As a compulsive constructor of alternative landscapes and realities, she explores ideas that bring together physical and psychological spaces and historical and ecological scapes. Her practice is built around process; creating a tension between the materiality and ephemerality of media. She invites the viewer to take a leap of faith and step into these constructive worlds alongside her.
Grobler is the recipient of a KANNA Award for her Visual Contribution to the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival (2023). In 2022, she was awarded the Centre Luigi di Sarro VAA Award (Italy) for her short film ‘Voices From a Divided Fountain’. In 2016, she was a recipient of the Africa Centre Award and Iziko Museums commissioned a site-specific work for the exhibition ‘Women’s Work’ at the South African National Gallery.
Other career highlights include: a solo exhibition at Rauma Art Museum, Finland (2024), a solo project for Cape Town International Art Fair (2017), a commissioned public artwork for Cape Town International Design Capital (2015) and the screening of her short film ‘Voices from a Divided Fountain’ as part of a travelling exhibition in Serbia (2019). Two other films, ‘21st Century Family Portrait’ and ‘Diary of a Nanosatellite’, were respectively screened at the ADDIS International Video Arts Festival (Ethiopia & Cape Town) and at MOFO for Forever Now (Tasmania and Deep Space, 2015). She was nominated for The Norval Sovereign African Art Prize (2021+22), Helgaard Steyn National Award for Contemporary Painting (2015), as well as short-listed for the Commonwealth Arts and Craft Award (2006). She has attended residencies in Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Serbia, Belgium, France, Mexico, India, the United States and initiated an interdisciplinary international residency in Cape Town and Richmond, South Africa (2017).
Grobler was invited to the Asian international Art Biennial in Bangladesh which took place in 2025, and she is Festival Curator for the KKNK for 2025 - 2027. Exhibitions include solo exhibitions in South Africa, Finland and Belgium and various international art fairs, site-specific projects and group exhibitions.
The exhibition lingers in that shift: how spectacle settles into matter, and how matter gathers meaning.
The work presents splices of Klein Karoo spaces as atmospheric and distilled colour fields. Embedded within fibre surfaces are ostrich eggshell beads, historically used in Southern Africa as relational currency. Small and tactile, the bead condenses ancestral time, labour and exchange - interrupting abstraction with locality and tactility.
A significant fibre work produced from agave silk introduces another temporal layer. Though alien to the prehistoric Karoo, the agave (or ‘garingboom’ / ‘thread tree’) has become embedded in the landscape over the past couple hundred of years thanks to humans crisscrossing the surface of the planet from North to South. Farmers use the leaves to sustain livestock during spells of drought. It speaks to adaptation and endurance - to how what is foreign becomes necessary and how what survives friction becomes embedded.
Across painting, fibre, craft processes and modest materials, the work collapses scale. Cosmic time meets drought time; celestial fall meets ground-level exchange. What appears as abstract is locally grounded - materially, geographically, historically.
The shooting star does not vanish. It lies resting within the landscape, within fibre, within touch. Luminous not for its spectacle, but for its capacity to transform the everyday.
Follow the magic...
__________
After many years of living in Cape Town city centre, Liza Grobler now resides in Oudtshoorn in the Klein Karoo. As a compulsive constructor of alternative landscapes and realities, she explores ideas that bring together physical and psychological spaces and historical and ecological scapes. Her practice is built around process; creating a tension between the materiality and ephemerality of media. She invites the viewer to take a leap of faith and step into these constructive worlds alongside her.
Grobler is the recipient of a KANNA Award for her Visual Contribution to the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival (2023). In 2022, she was awarded the Centre Luigi di Sarro VAA Award (Italy) for her short film ‘Voices From a Divided Fountain’. In 2016, she was a recipient of the Africa Centre Award and Iziko Museums commissioned a site-specific work for the exhibition ‘Women’s Work’ at the South African National Gallery.
Other career highlights include: a solo exhibition at Rauma Art Museum, Finland (2024), a solo project for Cape Town International Art Fair (2017), a commissioned public artwork for Cape Town International Design Capital (2015) and the screening of her short film ‘Voices from a Divided Fountain’ as part of a travelling exhibition in Serbia (2019). Two other films, ‘21st Century Family Portrait’ and ‘Diary of a Nanosatellite’, were respectively screened at the ADDIS International Video Arts Festival (Ethiopia & Cape Town) and at MOFO for Forever Now (Tasmania and Deep Space, 2015). She was nominated for The Norval Sovereign African Art Prize (2021+22), Helgaard Steyn National Award for Contemporary Painting (2015), as well as short-listed for the Commonwealth Arts and Craft Award (2006). She has attended residencies in Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Serbia, Belgium, France, Mexico, India, the United States and initiated an interdisciplinary international residency in Cape Town and Richmond, South Africa (2017).
Grobler was invited to the Asian international Art Biennial in Bangladesh which took place in 2025, and she is Festival Curator for the KKNK for 2025 - 2027. Exhibitions include solo exhibitions in South Africa, Finland and Belgium and various international art fairs, site-specific projects and group exhibitions.
EVERARD READ CAPE TOWN - 3 Portswood Road
Cape Town, 8002
South Africa
+27 21 418 4527 | ctgallery@everard.co.za
Operating hours:
Monday - Friday 9:00 - 17:00
Saturday - 9:00 - 13:00
If you are looking to add to your collection and you are unable to make it to our gallery during operating hours, please contact us via ctgallery@everard.co.za to make an appointment outside of these hours.
