Bev Butkow co-opts weaving as a way to think through how materials function as sites of meaning, and how the relentlessness and regularity of labour imprints her embodied life experiences and the tensions of living in a gendered body onto the weave.
Butkow is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts at Wits University on a scholarship from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Governing Intimacies project. She will exhibit at the 2020 Dak’art Biennale, having recently exhibited at 1-54 London, Cape Town Art Fair and Wits Art Museum. Coming from a place of supreme organisation and structure – as a chartered accountant – Butkow started making art in her mid-40s, changing careers to become a full time artist. Butkow is represented by Guns & Rain and her work is housed in local and international collections.
Deeply committed to social engagement and education, she co-founded a library in rural Limpopo and takes an active role on the board and management committee of 11 schools. Inspired by the only city she has ever lived in, Butkow lives with her husband and four children in Johannesburg.
Her creative home is the Bag Factory Artist Studios, Newtown, blocks away from where her grandfather sold eggs at the Fresh Produce Market in the 60s
Johannesburg-based artist Bev Butkow explores multiple facets of the moment of intersection represented by constellations she calls embodied- entanglements.