FADA Gallery, University of Johannesburg

FADA Gallery, University of Johannesburg The Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture's Gallery at The University of Johannesburg. We bring you the latest in design and the visual arts.

The FADA gallery is at the entrance to the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Johannesburg. Our exhibitions showcase the very best that is happening in all of the disciplines that are offered at FADA;
Interior Design, Industrial Design, Visual Arts, Architecture, Jewellery Design, Multimedia and Graphic Design
This leads to very unique and interesting exhibitions!

03/09/2026

Meet the Artist | Xylan de Jager

Meet Xylan de Jager, one of the artists participating in Relational Trans_Positions: Research as an Act of Becoming, the 2026 FADA Creative Research Platform exhibition.

De Jager explores the relationships between art, science, nature and human interaction through living mycelium installations that evolve as audiences engage with them.

By tracing the biological marks left by touch, movement, and observation, the work transforms everyday interactions into complex microbial landscapes. It reveals the often-unseen processes that shape natural systems and creative practice.

Challenging traditional ideas of authorship, the work recognises the collective roles of visitors, laboratory practitioners, living organisms and the artist. Through this collaboration, de Jager invites audiences to reflect on participation and the hidden networks connecting people, environments, and knowledge systems.

Exhibition Opening

10 September 2026 | 17:30 for 18:00
FADA Gallery, UJ Bunting Road Campus
RSVP and full details via the link in our bio.





02/09/2026

Meet the Artist | Leon Krige

Meet Leon Krige, one of the artists participating in Relational Trans_Positions: Research as an Act of Becoming, the 2026 FADA Creative Research Platform exhibition.

Krige explores the city as a place of both connection and division, using bridges, boundaries, and urban landscapes as symbols of power, memory, and transformation. Through layered analogue photography and panoramic digital compositions, his work examines how cities are shaped by history, migration, architecture, and the movement of people.

Using multiple exposures on medium format film and meticulously stitched photographic panoramas, Krige creates dreamlike images that blur familiar landmarks and reveal hidden relationships between places, structures and communities.

His work invites viewers to look beyond the surface of the urban environment and consider the social, cultural, and political forces embedded within it.

Exhibition Opening

10 September 2026 | 17:30 for 18:00
FADA Gallery, UJ Bunting Road Campus
RSVP and full details via the link in our bio.





02/09/2026

Meet the Artists | Dr Martin Bolton & John Shirley

Meet Dr Martin Bolton and John Shirley, two of the artists participating in Relational Trans_Positions: Research as an Act of Becoming, the 2026 FADA Creative Research Platform exhibition.

Bringing together decades of ceramic craftsmanship with emerging digital technologies, their collaborative practice explores the evolving relationship between traditional making and contemporary modes of fabrication.

Dr Bolton works at the intersection of industrial design, digital fabrication and practice-based research, investigating how technologies such as 3D scanning, digital modelling and additive manufacturing can expand the possibilities of ceramic practice.

Shirley brings more than five decades of material exploration, experimentation and craftsmanship to the collaboration. Working with clay as both medium and teacher, his practice is grounded in a deep understanding of ceramic materials, with a particular sensitivity to movement, light, translucency, surface and transformation.

Together, their work brings traditional ceramic processes into dialogue with contemporary digital tools. Rather than positioning technology and craftsmanship as opposites, the collaboration considers how they can inform, strengthen and enrich one another — creating new ways of interpreting, extending and reimagining knowledge embedded within ceramic traditions.

Their practice asks us to consider:

What becomes possible when centuries-old craftsmanship meets cutting-edge technology?

Exhibition Opening

10 September 2026 | 17:30 for 18:00
FADA Gallery, UJ Bunting Road Campus

RSVP and full details via the link in our bio.








31/08/2026

Meet the Artist | Christa Van Zyl

Meet Christa van Zyl, one of the artists participating in Relational Trans_Positions: Research as an Act of Becoming, the 2026 FADA Creative Research Platform exhibition.

Van Zyl explores the often-unseen labour and physical impact of care, attention, and emotional investment that shapes institutional life. Drawing from handwritten notes, task lists and spontaneous drawings created during meetings, she transforms everyday traces into a thought-provoking textile installation.

Through suspended textile forms and reconstructed patterns, Oogklappe unmasks how knowledge, memory, and experience are carried not only through official records and systems, but also through the body itself.

The work invites viewers to consider the quiet yet powerful ways that attention, repetition and care become embedded. How do the unnoticed marks, routines and gestures of everyday life tell the story of who we are and the worlds we help sustain?

Exhibition Opening

10 September 2026 | 17:30 for 18:00
FADA Gallery, UJ Bunting Road Campus

RSVP and full details via the link in our bio.



28/08/2026

Meet the Artist | Professor Tobias Barnard

Meet Professor Tobias Barnard, one of the artists participating in Relational Trans_Positions: Research as an Act of Becoming, the 2026 FADA Creative Research Platform exhibition.

Working at the intersection of science and art, Professor Barnard collaborates with living microorganisms to reveal the hidden beauty and complexity of the microscopic world.

Using controlled laboratory environments and macro photography, he transforms microbial growth patterns into striking images resembling landscapes, galaxies, maps and abstract paintings. Balancing scientific inquiry with artistic exploration, his work invites audiences to reflect on creativity, chance and the extraordinary worlds that exist beyond what we can ordinarily see.

A special thanks to the Creative Microbiology Research Colab and the Water and Health Research Centre for their support and contribution to this interdisciplinary research and creative practice.

Exhibition Opening

10 September 2026 | 17:30 for 18:00
FADA Gallery, UJ Bunting Road Campus

RSVP and full details via the link in our bio.





28/08/2026

Meet the Artist | Zinhle Zulu

Meet Zinhle Zulu, one of the artists participating in Relational Trans_Positions: Research as an Act of Becoming, the 2026 FADA Creative Research Platform exhibition.

Zulu explores the identities of Zulu women across different stages of life, drawing attention to voices, experiences and forms of knowledge that have often been overlooked within folklore, history and cultural narratives.

Inspired by the Zulu folktale of uMabhejane, the work takes the form of an interactive visual puzzle featuring three women who represent distinct stages of womanhood: uMakoti, the newly married woman; uMfazi, the wife or woman; and uMamezala, the much older mother in law.

Through traditional Zulu attire and symbolic visual cues, the installation examines how identity, femininity and social recognition are shaped, performed and interpreted within cultural contexts.

Exhibition Opening

10 September 2026 | 17:30 for 18:00
FADA Gallery, UJ Bunting Road Campus

RSVP and full details via the link in our bio.





26/08/2026

Meet the Artist | Gavin Krastin

Meet Gavin Krastin, a UJ Artist in Residence hosted by UJ Arts & Culture and one of the artists participating in Relational Trans_Positions: Research as an Act of Becoming, the 2026 FADA Creative Research Platform exhibition.

Krastin’s interdisciplinary practice unfolds at the intersection of live art, theatre, visual art and site responsive performance. Through embodied research and immersive experiences, he explores how bodies, materials and spaces shape our understanding of the social, cultural and historical forces influencing everyday life.

Working across unconventional environments, his performances invite audiences into active encounters where intimacy, endurance, vulnerability and reflection become tools for inquiry. By engaging with architecture, objects, landscapes and collaborative processes, Krastin challenges traditional ideas of spectatorship and encourages new ways of experiencing and interpreting performance.

As both an artist and curator, Krastin is deeply invested in expanding the ecology of live art in South Africa and creating spaces for experimentation, dialogue and critical engagement.

Exhibition Opening

10 September 2026 | 17:30 for 18:00
FADA Gallery, UJ Bunting Road Campus

RSVP and full details via the link in our bio.





25/08/2026

Meet the Artist | Oupa Sibeko

Meet Oupa Sibeko, one of the artists participating in Relational Trans_Positions: Research as an Act of Becoming, the 2026 FADA Creative Research Platform exhibition.

Working across performance, visual art, scholarship and public engagement, Sibeko explores memory, identity, representation and the politics of the body.

Drawing on African indigenous knowledge systems, ritual, communal practices and embodied research, his work examines how bodies, particularly the Black male body, are represented, remembered and understood.

Through performance, participation, and play, Sibeko creates spaces for dialogue, reflection, and connection. His practice invites audiences to consider questions of belonging, resilience, and collective experience within contemporary society.

Exhibition Opening

10 September 2026 | 17:30 for 18:00 at the FADA Gallery.

RSVP and full details via the link in our bio.





25/08/2026

Meet the Artist | Neil Lowe

Meet Neil Lowe, one of the artists featured in Relational Trans_Positions: Research as an Act of Becoming, the 2026 FADA Creative Research Platform exhibition.

In Lowe’s work, sculptural forms become prints; painted surfaces are scanned, reworked and set in motion; images move between paper, screen and digital space. Each translation creates the conditions for something new to emerge, while traces of earlier forms remain present.

Working across sculpture, printmaking, painting, digital technologies and moving image, he uses composition as both a visual and musical method. Forms, colours, rhythms and intervals are arranged, repeated and transformed. Like a musical phrase transposed into a different key, they take on new qualities while retaining relationships across materials and over time.

These transpositions speak directly to the exhibition’s theme and to its understanding of research as an act of becoming: an evolving process whose transformations visitors are invited to trace.


Exhibition Opening

10 September 2026 | 17:30 for 18:00 at the FADA Gallery.
RSVP and full details via the link in our bio.





25/08/2026

What connects memory, identity, science, performance, technology, craft, and living systems?

Discover Relational Trans_Positions, the FADA Creative Research Platform, where artists, researchers, makers, and performers come together to explore the relationships that shape our world.

Featuring works by Neil Lowe, Oupa Sibeko, Tobias Barnard, Xylen de Jager, Christa van Zyl, Leora Farber, Leon Krige, Zinhle Zulu, Martin Bolton, John Shirley, and Gavin Krastin, this exhibition invites audiences into a dynamic space of connection, transformation, experimentation, and dialogue.

From microbial landscapes and living installations to performance, photography, ceramics, digital technologies, and cultural storytelling, Relational Trans_Positions reveals the unseen networks that bind people, materials, histories, and knowledge systems together.

Join the conversation. Experience the connections. Reimagine the possibilities.

Address

Bunting Road Cottesloe. FADA Building
Johannesburg
2006

Opening Hours

Tuesday 09:00 - 16:00
Wednesday 09:00 - 16:00
Thursday 09:00 - 16:00
Friday 09:00 - 16:00
Saturday 09:00 - 13:00

Telephone

0115591386

Website

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