JANE EPPEL

(b. 1979 Cape Town, South Africa)

Jane Eppel is a South African printmaker based in the Cape Peninsula, which is the smallest yet richest of the world's six Floral Kingdoms. Inspired by nature, her work focuses on the abundance and diversity which daily surrounds her.

Eppel's copperplate etchings are a contemporary interpretation of the traditional genre of botanical art. Her intricately detailed studies of local flora are depicted singly, in sequence, or knotted into suggestions of further shapes and signs. The quietness of the works belies the physical rigour of their making: copperplate etching is a very laborious process. From preparing the sheets of copper to finally etching the needle-drawn lines in ferric chloride, a work can take Eppel weeks and even months to complete. 

Though true to the ready familiarity of its subject matter, Eppel's flowers are not indebted to the conventions of photorealism. They operate as a form of storying, each of the works taking its place within a series of interlinked points, stages and movements. The artist’s eye is an obsessive one, probing the sensitivity of every stigma and stamen and matching their specificity with the exactness of her incisions. Yet the micro gives way to the macro and some of the flowers allude to seemingly more remote forms – to the imagined lines of a constellation and the orbital planes of a planet or, conversely, to the smallest unit of an atom or the bonds of a molecule.

EXHIBITIONS

2020          On Being, group show, Everard Read, Franschhoek

                  Journeys of the Mind, group show, Everard Read, Franschhoek

2019          Southern Aspect, group show, Everard Read, London, UK

                   Recent Works, solo, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa

2018    Winter, group show, Everard Read, London, UK

2013          Recent Work, solo, Rust en Vrede Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2012          TRACE, a joint show with Cathy Abrahams, In Toto Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa 

An Alphabet of Fynbos, solo, South African Print Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

Nature of the Earth: conversations from above and below, with Nic Bladen, Astrid Dahl and Katherine Glenday, Amaridian Gallery, New York

2011         In Bloom II, group show, Casa Labia, Muizenberg, South Africa

Print, Rust en Vrede Gallery, South Africa

Art on Paper, group show, Kalk Bay Modern Gallery, South Africa

Recent Prints, solo, South African Print Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

Natural Selection, with botanical sculptor Nic Bladen, Rust en Vrede Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

10 Years On, group exhibition curated by Andrew Lamprecht and Jessa Mockridge, acknowledging the 10 year milestone of the 2001 Michaelis graduates. The Michaelis Gallery, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa

2010         In Bloom, group show, Casa Labia, Muizenberg, South Africa

Coppertone 77, group exhibition, Salon 91, Cape Town, South Africa

20-squared, Dorp Street Gallery, Stellenbosch, South Africa

Print, These Four Walls Gallery, Observatory, South Africa

HEEMS, group exhibition at Kruisrivier Farm, South Africa

Art on Paper and Ceramics, Kalk Bay Modern Gallery, South Africa

Contemporary South African Art, curated by Geeta Chagan at Degree Art Gallery, London, UK

Tretchikoff and me, group show, curated by Andrew Lamprecht, Salon 91, Cape Town, South Africa

Smorgasbord, group show, Wessel Snyman Collective, Cape Town, South Africa

Affordable Art Fair, Bristol, UK

'Heartland' a 3-woman show with Marieke Prinsloo and Mila Reyneke at Grande Provence Gallery, Franschhoek, South Africa

2009          Let them eat cake, group show, Dorp Street Gallery, Stellenbosch, South Africa

Angels IV, the annual Summer exhibition at Grande Provence Gallery, Franschhoek, South Africa

Artworks on Paper' group show, Kalk Bay Modern Gallery, South Africa

2008         Sanctum, solo, Bell Roberts Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2007         RINT 07, group show, Bell Roberts Gallery, Lourensford, South Africa

Greenhouse, group show, Bell Roberts Gallery, Lourensford, South Africa

2006          Orientation: bearing east, solo, Irma Stern Museum, Cape Town, South Africa

2004         Brett Kebble Award finalist

Curiosity CLXXV, group exhibition celebrating UCT's 175th anniversary