Stephen Hobbs (b. 1972, Johannesburg, South Africa)

For the past three decades, Hobbs’s practice has been underpinned by three core interest areas: architecture and the built environment, art and war, and anatomy and the body. Johannesburg, his hometown has served as a critical reference point for his artistic insights into the – apartheid city turned African city – with a particular interest in the impact of defensive urban planning and architecture on the behavioural aspects of city and society. Printmaking, model making, video and photography serve as foundations for large-scale installations and commissions, simultaneously offering audiences access to a variety of editioned and serialised works. Much of this effort has been facilitated through close collaboration with David Krut Projects in South Africa and New York. Hobbs is a fellow of the Ampersand Foundation and fellow of the Cities Leadership Forum Johannesburg. Hobbs has had numerous solo exhibitions in South Africa and abroad, and has participated in residencies in North America, Europe, and Africa. His work can be found in public and private collections in South Africa, Europe, and the USA.

Johannesburg by definition conjures a psychology of defensiveness, to the extent that the public realm seems better handled by private management companies and corporate self-interest rather than the governmental powers that be. Hobbs’ installation of found and hand crafted steel elements, alludes to an abstracted defensive forest, sited in the hard environment of this parking lot. Hobbs’ longstanding interest in the deployment of artist’s skills in creating deception during war times: fake – surveillance – trees in no man’s land, papier mâché heads in trenches to draw out sniper fire, the designing of camouflage and soon, correlates with his own psychological and aesthetic pre-occupations with a city in distress and the necessary tactics that consume us in surviving this place.