Inaugural winner of the DALRO Visual Arts Merit Award launches his much-awaited solo exhibition

By Tonderai Chiyindiko

The inaugural winner of the Dramatic, Artistic, and Literary Rights Organisation (DALRO) Visual Arts Merit Award, Tshepo Bopape showcased his much-awaited and first solo exhibition, Sea-Crits In The Water, at the DALRO Gallery recently.

After winning the award which is a collaboration between DALRO and the Blessing Ngobeni Art Prize Foundation (BNAF) in May 2024, Tshepo Bopape worked for several months to create an impressive body of work specifically for and as a key outcome of the award.

The works which form Sea-Crits In The Water are all centred around the theme of water. In exploring and unpacking water, Tshepo Bopape drew from ritual, tradition, heritage, religion and other closely related sub-themes which form part and parcel of the lived experience of black and African communities.

Though the weather was not so friendly on the night of the exhibition’s launch, friends and colleagues as well as sponsors and partners showed up in numbers to support Tshepo Bopape at the culmination of his almost year long journey.

Through Sea-Crits In The Water Tshepo Bopape has certainly announced himself to the artworld and judging by the audience, art lovers and art collectors’ positive response to his work, it is only a matter of time before one of the prominent galleries selects him as one of the artists they would like to represent.

The DALRO Visual Art Merit Award is a much-needed platform, and one hopes that more partners come on board to support this initiative which seeks to among other things give young and upcoming visual artists a pathway into the professional space of art practice.