Nicola Grobler

E-mail: [email protected]
https:/up-za.academia.edu/NicolaGrobler

@NicolaGrobler on Twitter

 

Nicola Grobler lectures in Fine Art studio practice and contemporary art discourse at the Department of Visual Arts and is the course facilitator for the Research: Fine Arts module.

 

Grobler was the team leader for the interdisciplinary SANParks / SANParks Honorary Rangers project (2012-13), which involved the Department of Drama and the Information Design section. She facilitated a series of public interventions, entitled #Intersections, for the Cool Capital Biennale 2014, as part of the Fine Arts curriculum.

 

Grobler’s creative and theoretical research is focused on artistic practices in relation to human-animal entanglements, urban ecology, the everyday, aesthetics, participation and agency. She is currently a Fine Arts doctoral candidate at the University of Cape Town and is the recipient of the National Research Foundation of South Africa’s Thuthuka grant and the University of Pretoria’s Vice-Chancellor’s grant (2016).
 

Research highlights since 2004:

Solo exhibitions and public interventions
2018

The Visitor Centre II, a series of public interventions held at Pretoria Art Museum, the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History and the City of Tshwane’s Biodiversity Festival at Fountains Valley Resort.

 

2016

The Visitor Centre, a series of public intervention and artist workshops at Ditsong Tswaing Meteorite Crater Reserve, Soshanguve and Roodeplaat Dam Nature Reserve, Tshwane

 

2006 
4-Auto Stroke, Erdmann Contemporary, Cape Town
Ich komme nicht von hier, Basel, Switzerland

2004 
The Enigma Machine, Erdmann Contemporary, Cape Town

Group exhibitions
2018

In the public domain, Pretoria Art Museum

 

2016

Tempo, Van Tilburg collection, University of Pretoria

 

2015

Staff exhibition, Department of Visual Arts, Fine Arts section

Capital: Present, Fried Contemporary, Pretoria

 

2014

Visual Encounters, Rautenbach Hall, University of Pretoria

 

2013 
AtWork27 (AtWork27.org), Fondation Donwahi Art Contemporain, Abidjan, Ivory Coast

2012 
AtWork27, Afropixel 3 festival, Institut Française de Dakar, Galerie le Manège, Dakar, Senekal, during Dak’Art 2012, the 10th Biennale of Contemporary African Art
AtWork27, Bulgarian Institute for Culture, Hamburg
Makeshift, Rautenbach Hall, University of Pretoria

2011 
Aperture, Fried Contemporary, Pretoria
Michaelis Alumni exhibition and auction, University of Cape Town
Present/History part II, Erdmann Contemporary, Cape Town
Animals in law and society: perspectives from Africa and beyond (conference), UNISA, Pretoria

2010 
Jozi and the (M)other City, University of Central Lancashire, UK
UP Staff exhibition, Fried Contemporary, Pretoria
(ES)Cape, Association of the arts, Pretoria

2009 
CAPE 09:Convergence (catalogue), Cape Town metrorail station
Pigment on Paper, UCA gallery, Observatory, Cape Town

2008
Jozi and the (M)other City (catalogue), Michaelis Gallery, University of Cape Town
A Century in the Service of Knowledge: Visuality/Commentary (catalogue), University of Pretoria Centenary exhibition, Pretoria

2007
Bijou Art Studio, Xcape Salt River circuit, Cape Town

2006
Open Weekend, IAAB International Exchange and Studio Program, Basel, Switzerland
PS. I love you, International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), New York
Out of Context, Erdmann Contemporary, Cape Town

2004
The Brett Kebble Art Awards, CTICC (catalogue), Cape Town
Sasol New Signatures, Pretoria Art Museum

Artist books
Tracking the Western Leopard Toad (2009), Foundation Lettera27, Milan, Italy
Small Victories (2009), Cape Town, edition of 10
Small Victories (2007-2008), Cape Town, edition of 10

Chapters in books
Grobler NH. 2014. Participatory art and the everyday: a South African perspective, in Interactive contemporary art: Participation in practice, edited by K Brown. London: IB Tauris. 

Conference papers presented

Grobler, NH. 2018. The Visitor Centre: a relational art intervention devised to promote urban biodiversity. URBIO 2018: urban biodiversity and food security. Cape Town, 11-14 September.

 

Grobler, NH. 2016. Encounters with The Visitor Centre: Art and interspecies relationships. Animal encounters: human-animal-contacts in the arts, literature, culture, and the sciences, International Conference at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU), Department for German and Comparative Studies, 25-27 November.

 

Grobler, NH. 2015. The visitor centre: artistic reconfigurations of interspecies relations in the city. The XIth International Institute of Applied Aesthetics’ Summer conference on Environmental Aesthetics, University of Helsinki, Lahti, Finland, 6-8 August.

Grobler, NH. 2011. Resistance and Compliancy in South African Art Audiences, 37th annual conference of the Association of Art Historians. University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom