Exhibition Type: Solo Exhibition

Artist: Thirza Schaap

Venue: BERMAN CONTEMPORARY

Address: Shop 5A2 Silo District, Victoria & Albert Waterfront

Dutch artist Thirza Schaap works with plastic collected from coastlines in South Africa, assembling bottles, lids, toys, containers and other fragments of everyday consumer life into carefully composed sculptural arrangements. Through photography, these discarded materials are transformed into images of remarkable composure and restraint.

At first glance, the photographs evoke flowers, vessels, botanical specimens and architectural forms. Colour, light and composition draw us into the image before the objects reveal themselves as the discarded residue of everyday consumer life.

Photography becomes the final material in Schaap’s practice.

While the environmental implications of the work are unmistakable, Schaap’s photographs are not simply records of plastic pollution. By placing these fragments within the visual language of the still life, they alter the way we encounter them. Objects designed for brief use are no longer defined by function or waste, but by form, relation and attention.

For centuries, still-life painting transformed ordinary objects into meditations on beauty, abundance and the passing of time. After the Tide inherits this tradition through the defining material of our own age. Rather than preserving what is fragile or fleeting, Schaap’s photographs turn their attention to a material that refuses to disappear. The still life becomes a portrait of the material legacy of contemporary culture.