Toward the Foundation

We are pleased to present an exhibition alongside Stevenson and Gallery MOMO at the Latitudes Centre for the Arts opening 14 February – 17 April 2026.Toward the Foundation marks the third public outing of kumalo | turpin and follows its debut at FNB Art Joburg and subsequent presentation at 1-54 London.

Toward the Foundation moves from the Latitudes online platform to the Latitudes Centre for the Arts as an exhibition segment of Department.01, and extends the gallery’s early articulation of the dialogues and sensibilities that will shape its programme and deepens the conversation by bringing together practices rooted in the layered notions of place, memory, and the architectures—physical, emotional, and communal—that support artistic growth.

Featuring Boemo Diale, Cameron Platter, Maja Maljević, Ronél de Jager, Sepideh Mehraban, Theresa-Anne Mackintosh, and Thulile Gamedze, Toward the Foundation presents an intimate structure: each artist is represented by two or more works, one from an earlier stage of their practice and one from more recent years. This pairing creates a material and conceptual dialogue that traces how their foundations were laid, how they have shifted, and how each practice continues to build itself outward.

Architecture, here, is both metaphor and method. For some, it appears through layers of paint, textile, clay, or gesture that resemble the incremental logic of construction. For others, it resides in the emotional spatiality of their work and collectively to form a symbolic scaffolding that supports a sense of place which emerges not as a fixed geography but as a living framework shaped by personal histories and the environments, whether real or imagined, within which the artists locate themselves.

The early works serve as blueprints: first attempts at articulating form and idea, with the initial architecture of a voice taking shape. Their more recent counterparts reveal how those foundations have strengthened, expanded, or been disrupted. Together, they reveal practices engaged in ongoing acts of building.

Rather than a definitive statement, Toward the Foundation positions itself as a site under construction. It gestures toward the gallery’s future home at Nine Yards in 2026, while acknowledging that artistic and curatorial foundations are never static, rather that they are built in dialogue, in community, and in time. This exhibition invites viewers to witness that process: the laying of stones, the reworking of forms, and the evolving architectures that anchor these artists' practices and the emerging vision of kumalo | turpin.

View the exhibition Department.01, Monday – Saturday, Latitudes Centre for the Arts, Shepstone Gardens, 10 Hope Rd, Mountain View, Johannesburg, 2192