Artist Database

Jo Roets was born in 1979 and lives and works in Cape Town. A sculptor, painter and mould-maker, she studied sculpture and ceramics at the PJ Olivier Art School in Stellenbosch and later obtained a diploma in art direction for film and television. After working in the art department of the film industry, she spent fourteen years lecturing in painting, prosthetics, special effects, sculpting and mould-making at a multimedia film school, before becoming a full-time artist in 2017. Roets is known for her ‘light relief sculptures’: air-drying clay rolled to a paper-thin thickness, incised with needles and toothpicks, and allowed to warp as it dries. Drawing on patterns found in indigenous South African cultures, the works explore the search for connection. She won the inaugural StateoftheART Gallery Award in 2018, the year she was also a finalist for the Sasol New Signatures, and in 2021 received a Tollman Bouchard Finlayson Art Award and a Sustainable Arts Foundation grant. She has held solo exhibitions at StateoftheART Gallery (2019) and Rust-en-Vrede Gallery (2022).