Convenors:
Ilze Wolff
Kemang Wa Lehulere
Special thanks:
Gladys Thomas
Alvin Castro
Lindsey Appolis
Warren Gray
Simonstown Museum
Sisters on Adderly
Nozuko Madokwe
Lulama Qupe
Bulumko Mbete
Coordinator:
francis burger
Pumflet Gladiolus documents the conversation between Ilze Wolff and Kemang Wa Lehulere about the neighbourhoods Luyolo and Redhill. Luyolo was a black neighbourhood in Simonstown that was completely demolished in 1964. The majority of the residents of Luyolo were relocated to Gugulethu. From Redhill, the ruins of which can be seen today, residents were removed to Ocean View. During their research about Luyolo and Redhill, Wa Lehulere and Wolff look at the paintings of Gladys Mgudlandlu, an artist from Gugulethu and the writings of Gladys Thomas, a poet living in Ocean View, in an attempt to find visual and literary links between these sites of forced removal.
Ilze Wolff and Kemang Wa Lehulere share Pumflet Gladiolus at A4 and the Adderley Street flower market, together with selections from the personal archive of Gladys Thomas, including her poem Fall Tomorrow published in 1972, and the work The Fall by Gladys Mgudlandlu, together with Wa Lehulere's short film Homeless Song from 2017.
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A4's Reading Room is an adaptable space attached to A4's Library and Archive. Intended to solve for form depending on its required function, it as at once a book-ish environment for reading and contemplation and a place to unpack artists' archives. The Reading Room's inter-leading doors become walls when locked to create a stand-alone spacial research studio that hosts residents and practices site-specific work that most-often is connected to packing and unpacking projects as a form of research.