Tel: +27 11 834 9181
Fax: +27 11 838 6791
Email: info@bagfactoryart.org.za
Postal address: PO Box 794 · Newtown · Johannesburg · 2113
Physical address: 10 Mahlatini Street · Fordsburg · Johannesburg · 2001
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Board
Our board members are Colin Smuts (Chairman), Makgati Molebatsi, Kagiso Pat Mautloa, Jill Trappler, and Sam Nhlengethwa.
COLIN SMUTS (CHAIRMAN)
Executive Director of the Community Based Development Programme (CBDP)
Coming from a commercial management background in the ‘70’s Colin Smuts’ desire and drive for development led him to start his career as Coordinator of the African Music and Drama Association in his spare time. He followed his passion and was soon leading The Open School, a cultural education programme, as the Director. Thereafter expertise in organizational development and hearfelt need to uplift communities and alleviate poverty instinctively directed him to lead the CBDP.
Smuts is also an author, poet, and columnist. A selection of his poems has been taught as part of the first-year curriculum at the University of the Witwatersrand.
He has remained active in community and cultural activities, working as the Chairman of Spaza Art, and as a member of the Family Life Center Board.
KAGISO PATRICK MAUTLOA
Pat Mautloa has been based at the Bag Factory Artists’ Studios since 1992, when he left his job in the graphic design studio at the SABC to pursue his destiny as a full-time artist. He is currently the Chairman of the Bag Factory’s board. Like his work, his studio is layered with bits and pieces of times gone by, found fragments of the city and relics of the people who’ve passed through his corner of it.
Based in his studio at the Bag Factory, Mautloa studies the street life around him. Working with figurative elements, abstract textures and multiple colour overlays, his work exploits the potential of lithography. Textures are an important part of Mautloa’s work – as he works he notices the mundane surfaces around him and will sometimes use these in his work. Unexpected things like the rough surface of a well used cutting board, or a worn out cotton rag, hold a new fascination and beauty for him. Delicate drawing and seemingly random splatter, entice the viewer and challenge one to look at the world in a new way. He is as comfortable in his abstract work as he is in the more figurative imagery. Most of his work is in oils and acrylic but he has also included found objects and collage in his two dimensional work and has also done a number of installations as well as doing photographic work.
MAKGATI MOLEBATSI
Makgati Molebatsi is a Marketing and Communications Specialist with extensive experience gained over 25 years. She graduated with a BA( SS) degree from the then University of the North (currently University of Limpopo) and went on to complete a one year Certificate in Business Administration from the Post Graduate Institute offered by the Wits Business School.
After working for a year as a Social Worker, she moved into Marketing and Communications; and has worked for Johnson & Johnson, Revlon, the Edgars Group (now Edcon), Eskom, Elements Marketing and Advertising and Intersite Property Management Services.
JABULANI SAM NHLENGETHWA
Sam Nhlengethwa was born in 1955, in Payneville, Springs, a mining community situated a short distance east of Johannesburg. Between 1977 and 1978 he completed a two year Fine Art Diploma at the Rorkes Drift Art Centre, after which he has exhibited extensively across the globe.After graduating he taught part-time at the Federative Union of Black Artists (FUBA) in Johannesburg. He stands today as one of South Africa’s finest pioneer black artists and his work explores themes such as music, specifically jazz, and the mechanics of everyday living. He works with found printed images from posters and magazines, including his recollections of township life.
Nhlengethwa was urban born and raised and therefore relates intimately to township existence, not only in his collages but also in his prints. Nhlengethwa has received various prestigious awards throughout his career and has attended workshops in New York, Senegal and Cuba. He has participated in group exhibitions since the early 1980s in Germany, France, the United States and Botswana.
He has held many solo exhibitions at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg, as well as several two-person shows. His work is represented in major public and corporate art collections in South Africa and abroad.
He studied art at Rorke’s Drift Art Centre, KwaZulu Natal and at the Mofolo Art Centre in Soweto. He has participated in Thupelo and Triangle workshops, held numerous solo and group exhibitions, and has work in a number of important public collections across South Africa.
JILL TRAPPLER
Jill Trappler was born in Benoni, South Africa, in 1957, studied art with Bill Ainslie at the Johannesburg Art Foundation and through UNISA. A weaver by trade, she has spent her adult life teaching Drawing and Painting in a variety of studios including hospitals, clinics, schools and UCT Summer school.
During the ’80 and ’90 Jill initiated and facilitated the formation of weaving, printing, spinning, paper Mache employment projects for women. For many years she served assisted in co-coordinating of and participant in many Thupelo Workshops and is currently a trustee of Thupelo. She also founded Dorman Street Art Studio, Valkenberg Studios and later the Greatmore Studios in Woodstock. She is a trustee of Greatmore Studios Trust and of the Bag Factory Studios in Johannesburg. Since 1996 she has served on the committee of the Association for Visual Arts (AVA) in Cape Town and as chair since 2000. In 2003 she was appointed to the Board of the National Arts Council.
Trappler began exhibiting in the late 1970s in group exhibitions in South Africa and abroad, in Germany, France, New York, Australia, Uganda, Luxembourg and Switzerland. She has held seven solo exhibitions in South Africa. Her work is represented in numerous private collections around the world and in a variety of public and corporate art collections, including the South African National Gallery. She lives and works as a full-time professional artist in Cape Town. (www.jilltrappler.co.za)
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