An exciting avenue in the decorative arts for Keiskamma Art Project is being pioneered by Tracy Lynch from Clout/SA. We have launched an initial range of printed textiles and wallpaper of exceptional quality, currently being marketed and sold through Clout/SA. Tracy has been experimenting with products and walking alongside us for some years now. We feel at the very beginning of this incredible journey!

Link to sale of textiles and wallpaper

Towards the end of 2020 GFI Gallery in Gqeberha commissioned a small tapestry from KAP exploring the rural to urban connection so intimately understood by Keiskamma artists. They bought the tapestry, and dedicated a light filled room of the gallery to a permanent shop and gallery space for KAP, a thriving outlet for the sale of our work to this day. Over four years, GFI Gallery, under the leadership of Dorothea Moors has been a safe haven for ideas, a hub of connections, and with the help of Anna Stewart and Rose von Wildemann, home away from Hamburg for KAP. We have been invited to participate in numerous group shows, one in particular with Textile Artists Port Elizabeth (TAPE) that cemented our friendship with textile/fibre artist and trainer Angie Weisswange who was invaluable in training KAP artists on turning waste into art for the Umlibo tapestry. We look forward to the up and coming exhibition ‘Unsettled’ in September.

In the background to the complex and layered development on iconic works, production works hard to keep up with smaller works like bags and cushions for consignment orders for shops/galleries like GFI in Ggeberha, Artvark Gallery in Cape Town, Willow and Bailey in Greyton and Stoep designs in East London with larger works also being available through Kim Sacks Gallery in Johannesburg. We create bespoke embroidered smaller works for Montebello, Design Afrika and Kalk Bay Modern, all in Cape Town. These are exceptional partners, very patient too, whose commitment to our work keeps the wheels turning. Illuminated too is our inability at times to produce factory-like conditions! Meeting order deadlines is something we aspire to, continue to improve on, and we welcome new technology that might assist our organisational capacity. Sophie Ferrand-Hazard through Art of Connection and now Constellations Gallery is also an exceptional partner in and catalyst for the creation of new tapestries. She continues to fuel development of both smaller and larger ‘high end’ artworks, having a profound effect on our aesthetics and quality, which she markets both locally and in Europe.

We are currently working on an exciting commission – a 4 meter high, 7 sided diamond structure – for world renowned and much loved Mercedes Benz South Africa (MBSA) in East London, under the current directorship of Andreas Brand. Andreas took the time to attend a sustainability session we hosted in January 2023 in Hamburg, during which time he pledged a partnership with KAP to celebrate MBSA’s 65^th year and diamond legacy. Building on the strength of ‘Threads that make a car’, a project for MBSA which we completed in 2022 where we covered an entire C-Class Mercedes in embroidery, in the last year we have been working on the structure and embroidery for a new feat of not only engineering, but also interpretation of legacy into tapestry.

MBSA are pivotal to industry in the Eastern Cape, supporting not only their own employees, but networks of industries, and even families in the region. Andreas Brand and Abey Kgotle invited us into the heart of their diamond strategy which is described by 7 pillars – sustainability, our leadership, licence to operate, operational excellence, passionate people, diamond product and innovation. Not only have we benefitted from an extraordinary commission – through work – but we have also grown our understanding of what it takes to lead an organisation of excellence.

Currently in production is a the steel diamond structure being engineered in Gqeberha by physicist and aerodynamic engineer Jan Hendrik Coetzee. The 41 square metres of embroidery making up the diamond facets are 90% complete and we look forward to installation of the diamond at MBSA and its launch in the coming weeks. MBSA continues to prove their commitment to the developmental landscape of the Eastern Cape, partnering with us also in their area of corporate social responsibility. It is a long-standing relationship that exists between MBSA and KAP which flourishes to this day.