Kilmany-Jo Liversage
(b. 1973, South Africa)
Kilmany-Jo Liversage creates portraits that intentionally blur the boundary between fine art and street art. Her rendering of female subjects is inspired by Renaissance-era portraiture and, by adopting the language of graffiti or urban art, she updates, renews and challenges the conventions of painting. Her work also references digitised mass production and a futuristic post-human world, populated by perfect-looking female cyborgs. The result is a series of vivid, large-format paintings, evoking the street, art history as well as a vision of the future.
Liversage explains further: “During the Machine Age, artists would reduce their compositions to its smallest constituent parts. With my current paintings, I manufacture this deconstruction by combining the painting tradition of portraiture with idiosyncrasies from the urban culture of tagging. This enables me to explore the intersection between street art and fine art while reconstructing them into a new genre of portraiture.”
With a list of achievements that includes the Sasol New Signatures Award in 2000 and a UNESCO bursary in 2005, as well as an artists’ residency in Colombia, Liversage has had the opportunity to explore and interpret the concept of street art in a distinctive and original way.
Liversage lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. Her work is included in several public and private collections in South Africa and around the world.
Education
1997
B.Tech Fine Arts, Free State Technikon
1994
H.Dip Fine Arts. Free State Technikon. Received a distinction in Painting