The Showroom Mural Commission

For the third iteration of The Showroom Mural Commission 2022-23, artist Adam Shield’s recurring motif of a hand-printed grid wraps around The Showroom facade as the framework for a new collaborative mural.

Meanwhile, inside the exhibition space for the duration of his exhibition in Summer 2022, Shield created a spatial collage for audiences to inhabit; an all-encompassing environment further exploring the expansive potential of drawing and print.

Building upon a period of collaborative research in the local neighbourhood, Church Street Library & histories of radical community print groups, in-situ printmaking workshops led by Adam created the context for a programme of drawing, print and poster-making sessions running on weekends throughout the exhibition.

Using drawing as a tool for communication and opening up spaces for critical reflection at times of rapid change, where Church Street is in the midst of major long-term redevelopment, Shield has collaborated with community groups, individuals from The Showroom neighbourhood and beyond. Posters of varying scales are being pasted up in an accumulating collage enveloping the facade; an amplification of voices revealing drawing, printmaking and collage as accessible platforms for reflection upon shared experiences; a means for personal expression to be collectively experienced by all.

Poster Workshops:

These free creative drawing and print-making workshops ran on Saturday 23 & 30 July; 6 & 13 August, 11am–4pm

For more information about the mural commission, contact Lily Hall:
[email protected]

In 2018 artist Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum was commissioned to create a full-scale mural on The Showroom’s facade, for which she had been inspired by South African writer Bessie Head (1937-1986).

Head rejected the brutality of apartheid by exiling herself to the village of Serowe in Botswana. Titled Exalt B.H. Sunstrum’s mural enveloped the facade of The Showroom with a view of Serowe’s landscape dominated by an ever-present sky, a significant element in Bessie Head’s oeuvre. Weaving in and out of this expanse of blue are Head’s words from Earth and Everything:

’I am building a stairway to the stars. I have the authority to take the whole of mankind up there with me. That is why I write.’

In 2019 artist Simnikiwe Buhlungu was commissioned to create the second Mural on The Showroom's facade. Notes to Self (Intimate I) references strolling as a form of knowledge production and used text, textile and interactive sound installations to communicate ideas of gathering through a call and response with local communities.

Departing from an intimate methodology of walking, for Notes To Self (Intimate 1) Buhlungu questions: how do we create structural spaces and communicate ideas of gathering within architectural, urban and public restrictions? How can one make visible personal reflections and poetics in the context of enduring collective ownership? This public commission sought to pose these questions through a site-specific installation where passers-by could record their own notes to self that would be listened to, manifested, and archived as a living ecosystem of local responses.