Artist Database

Heike is a South African artist specializing in mixed media, printmaking and installation art. Drawing inspiration from her upbringing on a Rose Farm, flora deeply influences her work. Surrounded by roses since childhood, she possesses a natural understanding of the flower’s anatomy, its colour, form, fragrance and its various uses.

Her often large-scale, site-specific installations seamlessly merge with their surroundings while asserting their presence through sheer size. She has known since childhood that she wanted to be an artist, studied Fine Art and completed her B-Tech cum laude Interior Design.

During the 10-week Southern African Foundation For Contemporary Art (SAFFCA) residency within the Vredefort Dome, Heike’s practice was guided by an open, responsive engagement with the surrounding environment and its materials. She gathered and transformed the plants through processes of drying, weaving, crushing and preserving. Scent, texture and touch became a central
language of the work.

The framed work “Rose Geology” consists of concentric circular formations composed from preserved and reconstructed rose matter. Petals to sepals, seeds and leaves were transformed into spherical bead-like forms, then threaded into expanding rings that echo the geological concentricity of the Vredefort Dome. The forms create a rhythm resembling growth cycles and each sphere carries traces of the rose’s anatomy: compressed petals create sweetly scented, darker inner beads, while sepals and fragmented leaves produce textured outer rings. As with the residency works created from Helichrysum, Khakibos and Slangbos, scent, texture and touch remain of the piece. The work shifts between sculpture, preservation and archive and becomes like a language between her and the flora.