Tamlin Blake
Important Figure, 2015.
About:
Tamlin Blake is a professional multi-media South African artist. She holds a Masters Degree in Fine Art from the University of Stellenbosch.
The major themes of Blake’s work have revolved around cross-cultural South African symbols of wealth and status. More recently though she is interested in what constitutes and underpins each individual’s sense of belonging and identity. This can be seen in the interplay of influences in her recycled newspaper tapestries, which visually and conceptually explore how stories weave themselves around us. The often seemingly surreal rise and fall of contemporary heroes, the successes and tragedies of ordinary people and the births and deaths of neighbours are part of the everyday yet sometimes bazaar events which insinuate themselves into our reality and affect our thinking.
Blake has exhibited extensively and received many grants and awards among them a Brett Kebble Merit award in 2003. Her work was included in the Synergy, exhibition of contemporary bead art at Iziko Michaelis Collection (2005-06) and the South African Art: Signs exhibition held at Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum in Bratislava (2007) and the Skin-toSkin: Challenging Textile Art show which formed part of the Kaunas Art Biennial TEXTILE 07 in Lithuania (2007). Her work was exhibited at the Spier Contemporary Exhibition (2008) and included at the South African Pavilion at the World Expo 2010 Shanghai China. Blake’s tapestry Maphela Ramphele was one of the 40 short-listed portraits chosen for the SPI National Portrait Award 2014. Her work is currently being exhibited and sold through the Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg and associated galleries.
In 2011 Blake was invited to the Frans Masereel Centre in Belgium for an artist’s residency where she worked on a series of 2 colour stone lithograph (courtesy Circa Gallery London)
