‘At the moment when I think of being in Paris I'm mostly excited about improving my French (I studied it at UCT) and free museum admission, which comes with the prize,’ painter Ian Grose told Art Throb, shortly after winning the much coveted Absa L’Atelier, which includes a six month residency at the The Cite des Arts in Paris, and R110 000.

Fittingly, Grose’s winning work, a triptych entitled Colour, Separation, deals translation, and what is lost in the process, applying theories of translation in...

‘At the moment when I think of being in Paris I'm mostly excited about improving my French (I studied it at UCT) and free museum admission, which comes with the prize,’ painter Ian Grose told Art Throb, shortly after winning the much coveted Absa L’Atelier, which includes a six month residency at the The Cite des Arts in Paris, and R110 000.

Fittingly, Grose’s winning work, a triptych entitled Colour, Separation, deals translation, and what is lost in the process, applying theories of translation in literature – and the loss associated – to the translation of an image into a painting.

‘In painting from existing images, and understanding myself as a translator of visual material, I have tried to find the embedded counterpoint to the loss of translation, and even the poetry of that loss’, says Grose. 

‘I'm not sure how I'll juggle work and Paris exploration, but we'll see what happens,’ said Grose.

Isabel Merz was named the winner of the Gerard Sekoto Prize, sponsored by the French Embassy, the French Institute and the Alliance Française which includes a three-month sabbatical in Paris, along with a Merit Award. The three other Merit Awards went to Amber Jade Geldenhuys, Alice Gauntlett and Sarah Spring. The remaining top ten finalists were Sofia Stodel, Gerhardt Coetzee, Jesse Hammond, J. van Schalkwyk and Bambo Sibiya.