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Half-Light

Michaelis School of Fine Arts
Cape Town

02 December - 17 December 2015


Half-Light is a collection of work produced for Ruby Swinney’s final graduate exhibition at Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town in 2015. The body of work consists of 35 paintings, and the collection was bought by the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA). 
    The work was later featured in Human Nature, a solo exhibition at the museum in 2018. 

I read Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go […] The haunting, timeless quality, set in a curiously nostalgic, yet unidentifiable period and landscape, and the painful emotional lives of these ‘non-people’ [...] has a powerful resonance for me.

[… ]Our nostalgia for a more utopian past might even be a slip of memory, a distortion caused by longing for what may or may not have been.

[...] In an age of doubt, stuck in the twilight space of uncertainties, we cling to these memories of wistful certitude.

- Ruby Swinney, Half-Light catalogue essay

Fall series  



Fall i, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 21 x 30 cm. Fall I, 2015. Oil on Tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Fall III, 2015. Oil on Tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Fall II, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Fall IV, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Fall V, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Fall VI, 2015. Oil on Tracing paper, 21 x 30 cm Fall VII, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 34 x 46 cm Fall VIII, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Fall IX, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Fall X, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Fall XI, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm


Trace series 



Trace I, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 21 x 30 cm Trace II, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 21 x 30 cm Trace III, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Trace IV, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Trace V, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 21 x 30 cm Trace VI, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Trace VII, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 42 x 59 cm Trace VIII, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 32 x 46 cm Trace IX, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 84 x 59 cm Trace X, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Trace XI, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Trace XII, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Trace XIII, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Trace XIV, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 84 x 59 cm Trace XV, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Trace XVI, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Trace XX, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 21 x 30 cm Trace XVII, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 21 x 30 cm Trace XVIII, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Trace XIX, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 23 x 32 cm Trace XX, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm

Echo series  



Echo i, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Echo I, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 21 x 30 cm Echo II, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 21 x 30 cm Echo III, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 21 x 30 cm Echo IV, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Echo V, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Echo VI, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Echo VII, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Echo IX, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 21 x 30 cm Echo X, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Echo XI, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 42 x 59 cm Echo XII, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Echo XIII, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Echo XIV, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 42 x 59 cm Echo XV, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Echo XVI, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 42 x 59 cm Echo XVII, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm Echo XVIII, 2015. Oil on tracing paper, 30 x 42 cm


Photography:  Michael Hall Photography