Publisher Spotlight: The Artists’ Press

Banele Khoza Nabeeha Mohamed Simon Attwood The Artists' Press is an independent print studio in rural South Africa, operating off-grid since 1991. Led by master printer Mark Attwood, the studio collaborates with Southern African artists to produce technically rigorous prints with a commitment to environmental sustainability. Exploring personal and cultural narratives, this presentation features work by Banele Khoza, Nabeeha Mohamed, and Simon Attwood. Using innovative printmaking techniques, they expand the possibilities of lithography. Khoza and Mohamed navigate identity and emotional vulnerability through layered washes and painterly gestures, while Attwood's multi-panel composition uses complex registration and overlays to create an intricate landscape that reflects his deep engagement with place. Banele Khoza was in born in 1994 in Hlatikulu in Eswatini. During high school, he moved to South Africa. He studied Fine Art at Tshwane University of Technology. On completion of his degree, he taught Drawing as well as Art Theory at the same institution. In 2018 he decided to stop teaching to work as a full-time artist and to launch the multi-purpose studio and gallery BKhz in Rosebank, Johannesburg. Khoza’s lithographs, demonstrate his skill and dexterity. His ability to embrace the unknown and to immerse himself in the technical possibilities of what lithography has to offer combined with the skills of master printer Mark Attwood have resulted in prints that reveal the artist’s gifts. Khoza worked on stone and grained film using a combination of pencil, litho crayon, ink and tusche washes. The delicate traces of the dried ink, Khoza’s choice of colours and drawing abilities combine to delight the eye. Khoza has been a keen draftsman since the age of five, drawing images of the toys that he wanted but which his conservative parents refused to get for him. This sense of longing and vulnerability can be seen in Khoza’s lithographs. Neat and detailed text weaves through some of the prints, but often one cannot read all the words. It is as if the artist entices one into his private world and then stops the reader from fully accessing it, questioning the viewer’s motives for the intrusion. Khoza’s journals are an integral part of his practice and are reflected in his image-making. Khoza’s interest in the private and the public merges with his interest in social media, technology, connection/disconnection, isolation and a longing to be whole and completely present with someone and oneself. Khoza’s lithographs explore a longing for connection and a wariness of self-criticism. Nabeeha Mohamed was born in Cape Town in 1988. She completed her fine arts degree at Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town. Her paintings and prints confront the contradictions of her position in post-Apartheid South African society. Her identity as a woman of colour, hushed during her childhood to assimilate into white society, is celebrated in her work where colour and strangeness shine. Her bright brush strokes and sharp words are at once playful and thoughtful. They create a moving and complex critique of class privilege and the capitalist economy that she benefits from. She has held several solo exhibitions and has participated in group shows from Cape Town to Lagos, Accra, New York and London as well as doing residencies in Brazil, South Africa and Ghana. Simon Attwood (b. 1997 Bedfordview, Johannesburg) is a young South African artist. He spent much of his childhood in his grandmother’s (Judith Mason) painting studio and his father’s printshop (The Artists’ Press), where he learnt about relief printing techniques that are a significant part of his work today. Attwood grew up in rural Mpumalanga and his work relates to the province’s landscape. In 2017 he graduated from the international baccalaureate diploma program at Waterford Kamhlaba United World College in Eswatini. He graduated with distinction from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in May 2022. His 2022 undergraduate thesis focussed on the rock paintings of Mpumalanga. Attwood’s most recent exhibition was The Unseen, a two-man show at the White River Gallery in 2024. Previous exhibitions include Artbash at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the FALL 2021 Undergraduate Exhibition at the SAIC Galleries in Chicago and The Garden of My Mind exhibition at Gallery 2 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Attwood’s print delves into landscapes with layered stories, histories and creatures that remain hidden from view. This includes trees from remote inaccessible mountain tops, imagery from ancient rock paintings, undescribed plant species and nocturnal animals.

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