One of the most unique contemporary galleries in Cape Town must certainly be the Joao Ferreira Gallery in Loop Street, and this September it is host to one of the most unique gallery exhibitions in Cape Town.

This Cape Town gallery will present Araminta de Clermont's first solo exhibition, Life After, which documents a cultural phenomenon: the “chappies” of the notorious South African numbers gangs – the 26’s, 27’s and 28’s.

These prison tattoos are, she believes, works of art and culturally significant in their own right, being the preferred art-form of an especially disenfranchised and marginalised group.

These are not designer tattoos. Rather, they are tattoos whose pigments are typically produced from ground up rubbish bins, batteries, or bricks, and each of them conveys a message.

Some prisoners go as far as covering their whole body, including the face, with these “chappies”. The motives behind such a drastic action fascinated Clermont.

Clermont found her subjects in Cape Town’s hidden places: homeless shelters, broken down tenement blocks, back alleys, soup kitchens, bus stations and township shebeens. She photographed them wherever she found them, always in their own environments.

Essentially, Clermont found herself wondering how it would be if we all had our past mistakes permanently emblazoned across our faces.

Araminta de Clermont Exhibition:

Date: 3 – 27 September 2008
Venue: Joao Ferreira Gallery
Location: 80 Hout Street | Cape Town

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