SPIER ART TRUST COLLECTION

Songsmith (The Great Karoo) is part of Burchell’s ongoing project wherein she restores broken objects and sites by embedding into them golden instruments called ‘songsmith’. The resulting sound sculptures and interventions respond to human contact by revealing songs about people, places and events as they fall into, and rise from, the vicissitudes of time.

Award-winning artist Jenna Burchell is driven to find ways to preserve the fragile and ephemeral nature of memory and experience. Often this involves fusing the digital with the natural world in order to create archives wherein the historical is subverted with narratives from the periphery.

Burchell has exhibited at various international galleries, museums and institutions, including a solo project at the 2014 National Arts Festival. Her works have been featured as special projects at select art fairs. She received the Thami Mnyele Fine Art Award (2011) and has been a resident artist at sculpture parks such as the YSP and Nirox.

‍