AbstRacT – Synchrony Revealed
Timed Online Auction, 4 - 23 July 2025
AbstRacT – Synchrony Revealed
About the SessionIn 2024, the Rupert Museum presented AbstRacT – The Hidden Synchrony, an exhibition inspired by Oscar Forel’s Synchromies series - close-up photographs of tree bark that transformed the familiar into bold abstraction. These works were paired with South African modernist paintings from the museum’s collection, creating surprising visual harmonies and fresh interpretations.
Building on this concept, AbstRacT – Synchrony Revealed is the result of the museum’s third Open Call, which received over 300 submissions. From these, 41 artists were selected to showcase their work in a group exhibition - now part of an exclusive online auction in collaboration with Strauss & Co.
The auction offers collectors a chance to discover new voices engaging with themes of ecology, memory, materiality, and abstraction. Each work reveals a dynamic interplay between natural form and artistic expression - where chance, structure, and symbolism collide.
During the period of the online auction the exhibition is accessible to be viewed at the Jan Rupert Art Centre, 41 Middle street, Graaff-Reinet.
Collection of the artworks will be available once the exhibition closes on 16 November 2025.
Please contact Eliz-Marie Schoonbee to arrange collection/delivery
tel: 021 888 3261
email: eliz-marie@rupertmuseum.org
ZAR 6 000
About this Item
signed
Notes
Watkins believes we have a tendency to reduce the complex systems found in nature to simplified idea, at best, to make them more comprehensible; at worst, to justify their exploitation. Like a work of art, nature holds far more than what initially meets the eye.
Her fascination with the intricate systems within plants and the natural world began with Lab Girl, a book by geobiologist and geochemist Hope Jahren. It introduced Watkins to the vast networks surrounding plant roots and sparked further reading, leading to awe-inspiring discoveries that now inform her artistic response to nature.
This painting interprets the mycorrhizal network – an underground web of mycelia through which trees communicate – using lines and circles to represent pathways and points of connection. These are overlaid by a forest rendered in delicate detail and translucent hues.
By making these hidden threads visible, Watkins hopes to inspire deeper reverence for the natural world – an understanding that a tree is far more than the sum of its leaves, branches, and roots. And yet, in attempting to convey this vast complexity, she finds herself, inevitably, simplifying it once again.
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