Dates: 7 July – 30 August 2026
2nd Walkabout event: 12:00 on Saturday, 29 August 2026
Venue: Reservoir Gallery, Oliewenhuis Art Museum, 16 Harry Smith Street, Bloemfontein
From the Depths Deeply Buried – a solo exhibition by Emma Willemse
In the solo exhibition titled From the Depths Deeply Buried, conceptual artist Emma Willemse presents works that engage thematically with the site of the exhibition. The Reservoir Gallery, an underground exhibition space at Oliewenhuis Art Museum, was once used for water storage. Sometime after it was built in 1904, it became dormant and forgotten until it was rediscovered in 1994 and repurposed to host exhibitions.
Willemse says that: “The Reservoir exhibition space has an interesting history related to many of the ideas in my work — its purpose and construction speak about preservation, exhumation and archaeology. Due to its subterranean location, it has connotations to the unconscious, those things that lie beneath the surface.”
Willemse will exhibit two bodies of work in the Reservoir space, both of which engage with the consciousness of place and its relationship to memory and identity. The first is an artist’s book installation called 101 Ways to Long for a Home. The second comprises five large-scale boat-like installations. The motif of the boat, explored extensively across both bodies of work, forms part of a continued investigation into the meanings the boat generates in the context of displacement.
The award-winning artist’s books installation is an ongoing project, consisting of more than a hundred and one handmade books and objects, in which discarded parquet floor blocks are repurposed as book covers, pages and sculptural elements. The boat-like installations are suspended, combining found and decayed makoros (wooden dug-out canoes) with handmade paper, paper pulp drawings and fabric.
Willemse’s artist’s books have previously been exhibited in diverse configurations in Florence, Dakar, Paris, London, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Bloemfontein and Franschhoek. The exhibition at Oliewenhuis Art Museum marks the first iteration of 101 Ways to Long for a Home structured as an encyclopaedia: divided into five volumes, each with its own foreword, introduction, five chapters and index. It is also the most extensive iteration to date, featuring new books alongside five recent boat-like installations.
Emma Willemse lives and works in Riebeek Kasteel in the Western Cape. In addition to her varied art practice, she is involved in art-related community projects for the youth in the Riebeek Valley. Her art-making deals with concepts of loss and place, such as displacement, sense of place and site-specific commemoration. As a former librarian, she is critical about dominant knowledge systems and through her artmaking, she investigates the interlinks between various alternative approaches to knowledge. She holds a Master’s degree in Visual Arts from the University of South Africa and qualifications in psychology and librarianship.
The public is invited to join Oliewenhuis Art Museum for a walkabout of the exhibition which will be conducted by the artist at 12:00 on Saturday, 29 August 2026.
Everyone is welcome and entrance is free of charge.
The exhibition can be viewed until Sunday, 30 August 2026. Oliewenhuis Art Museum is located at 16 Harry Smith Street, Bloemfontein and is open to the public from Monday to Friday between 08:00 and 17:00, and on Saturdays, Sundays, and public holidays between 09:00 and 16:00. Please note that the main gate closes to new arrivals at 16:30 on weekdays and 15:30 on weekends; however, visitors already inside are welcome to enjoy the museum until closing time. A ramp at the main entrance provides wheelchair access, while a lift provides access to the Permanent Collection display areas on the 1st floor. A parking fee of R10 per vehicle is charged, but entrance to the museum is free.
For more information on Oliewenhuis Art Museum please contact the Museum at 078 968 4300 or oliewen@nasmus.co.za. Stay up to date by following Oliewenhuis Art Museum on Facebook, Instagram and X for all upcoming exhibitions and events.
