A4
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What is A4?


A4's laboratory for the arts in Cape Town was established in 2017 to support arts practitioners and provide a place for the public to interact with art and artists.

A4 is a project space offering a public library, modular rooms for sharing and showing art, a residency programme, studio, a book store, and offices for our team of arts workers.

A4 supports invited arts practitioners to take time to process their respective practices inside what we’ve come to call our ‘curatorial studio’. This is where 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.

In the curatorial studio, 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 towards societies that are socially and environmentally just.

You can read about our projects here.

A4 Team


Alana Blignaut (Digital Archivist); Daniel Malan (Curator – Proto); Janos Cserhati (Exhibitions Producer); Josh Ginsburg (Director and Chief Curator); Katherine Schaefer (International Projects); Kathryn Smith (Adjunct Pracademic); Khanya Mashabela (Curator); Kyle Morland (Exhibition Designer); Lucienne Bestall (Curatorial Researcher and Writer); Mizana Prusent (Housekeeper); Sara de Beer (Editor); Tabitha Guy (Executive Assistant and Manager); Yolanda Maloni (Housekeeper); Zach Viljoen (Archivist and Registrar).

Who is A4?


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 an Arts Lab in Buitenkant Street in 2017.

About A4’s Founder:


Wendy Fisher founded A4’s Arts Lab in Cape Town to create an artist-centric and artist-led environment in conversation with A4's director, Josh Ginsburg. Believing in the power of art to help society hold complexity, think creatively, and problem solve towards a better future, Wendy has devoted her career to cultural philanthropy. She is proud of her Jewish identity and of her South African identity and these cultures are at the heart of her practice as a patron of the arts. As a passionate advocate for the artistic community in South Africa, Wendy is a lifelong patron of the country’s galleries, artists, learning institutions, and project spaces and provides significant support throughout the art ecology. At present, Wendy’s primary research interest is in sustainability in the arts, and how perspectives on sustainable practice from the Global South can inform decisions being made by arts institutions worldwide.