A4 was established as a laboratory for the arts in 2017. The organisation supports arts practitioners and provides an interface for the public to interact with the process of artistic and curatorial production.
Our studio in Cape Town offers a public library, modular rooms for sharing and showing art, a residency programme, a book store, and offices for our team of arts workers.
A4’s team of producers, writers, archivists, and curators offer crucial support and critical friendship that is shared both ways; from artists to A4, from A4 to artists.
Through these engagements, A4 hopes to afford a repose from the pressures associated with production and consumption. Practitioners are invited to release into free exploration and serious play. We begin with this principle: something will happen, devoting our attention to how making happens.
We work in the arts, with artists and arts workers because we believe they’re best positioned to world-build and innovate toward societies that are socially and environmentally just.
A4 is founded and funded directly by Wendy Fisher as part of her cultural philanthropic efforts.
The team in Cape Town function with operational authority, designing the programme and allocating the project’s resources.
As a private foundation with one patron, A4 is self-sufficient: a philanthropic arts foundation independent from the policies, values, principles, and needs of any government or state infrastructure.
A4 is a resource that is free to public. There is never an entry fee to use our library, visit our exhibitions, attend a workshop and be part of our events.
A4 was established as an NPC in 2015 and opened our free-to-public studio in Buitenkant Street in 2017.
