04/06/2026
Commissioned artwork for the Four Seasons Hotel, The Westcliff
Fiona Pole, Shared Pathways I & II, Mixed media on paper, 160 x 160cm each (3 x 3 drawings per work of 49 x 49cm each), Framed, Art Glass
In the passage of a Johannesburg hotel, “Pathways I” and “Pathways II” serve as a meditation on the urban experience. Pole is renowned for her ability to elevate the “nobodies” of city living. Here, she transforms the walkway into a gallery of collective memory, using a grid of eighteen panels to echo the measured cadence of the guests passing by.
Pole’s work often focuses on “captured” moments—random figures like a woman leaving a house or a man on a bicycle—granting these fleeting ghosts the same artistic weight as the city’s monumental architecture. While the majority of her subjects are rendered in stark, anonymous black and white, she uses deliberate splashes of colour—a primary red, a sun-drenched yellow.