W17 Gallery
An art gallery in a flexible workspace
“We are a disruptive gallery as we redefine traditional gallery models to make art more accessible in multiple ways…”
W17 Gallery brings art into everyday spaces, showcasing local artists across all Workshop17 locations. Through curated exhibitions and partnerships, we create opportunities for both members and the public to engage with art through talks, walkabouts, workshops and art sales.
By integrating art into working environments, we support creativity, productivity, and meaningful connections between artists, collectors, and new audiences. Our approach broadens exposure, creates new investment opportunities, and ensures that art is seen, valued, and appreciated.
Featured Exhibition
Perspective
Looking Back, Looking Forward
by Thom Pierce
Sekhobe Letsie - Matsieng, Lesotho, 80 x 67 cm, Photographic print on archival paper. Thom Pierce.
“In each format there is the possibility to tell the stories that need to be heard”
We are pleased to present a retrospective of photographic works by Thom Pierce in the exhibition Perspective: Looking Back, Looking Forward. This is a retrospective of campaign work by Pierce over the last 10 years. This collection sheds light on some of the challenging aspects of our social and political history through the portraits of individual people and their experiences. On their own, these are stories lived and told through a single photograph. Collectively, they prompt us to visit the present through a reflective lens, and question how these stories, and what they represent, reside within the future.
This exhibition is a selection of works from Pierce’s Campaigns Studio. Each campaign is a visual narrative of the lives of people facing adversity or providing a solution for others, and Pierce reflects: “I have been making photography campaigns for over ten years now. The immediacy of an engaging portrait can create an empathy link that is so powerful it can draw the casual observer into the life of a stranger in a second. And from there the story can be told, expanded upon and a connection can be created that builds support or outrage for a critical cause.”
Pierce’s work serves as a reminder of relativism and perspective. It offers us a view into a fragment of time and place, with the people who have been affected by social adversity and prompts us to question these narratives in the present context, alongside our own position. Each portrait is a portrait of a broader narrative and community, and at the same time, reminds us of the importance of the individual story. Each portrait serves as a magnitude of intimacy as we view one person and their lived experiences: both challenges and successes alike.
As part of the W17 Gallery’s commitment to the impact of art and social change, together with Pierce, we will be committing all proceeds from the sale of the artworks to SDS Alliance who save lives by developing new therapies for Shwachman-Diamond Syndrome, a life-threatening condition that causes bone marrow malfunction.
About the Artist
Thom Pierce (born 1978 in Jersey, Channel Islands) is an award-winning British photographic artist, based in Johannesburg, South Africa.
After graduating from the Brighton Institute of Modern Music in 2004, Pierce enjoyed a successful career in the music industry, touring the world with The Streets, Zero 7, Massive Attack, Chemical Brothers, Keane and George Michael.
Through his extensive travels Pierce rediscovered his love of the camera, eventually leaving music to pursue a career as a documentary and portrait photographer.
Over the past fifteen years he has built a substantial body of work that has been exhibited in major international galleries and festivals around the world.
His work explores the line between art, documentary, and traditional portrait photography to create carefully crafted dramatic images. He splits his time between his portrait studio, personal projects, commissioned work and his social outreach projects..
Pierce’s work has been published globally in newspapers, magazines, and books and exhibited internationally. Notably he has exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery in London, the United States Senate in Washington D.C. and the South African National Gallery.
He is the recipient of Lensculture Emerging Talent, Piclet Popcap Prize and the PDN Storytellers Award; and his work has featured as part of several human rights campaigns, many of which are featured in this exhibition.
For more information and view his portfolio visit:
Join us for the opening and a walkabout with Thom Pierce at Workshop17 The Bank, 24 Cradock Ave, Rosebank, Johannesburg on 3 July 2025 at 18h00
Above left: Collen Maswanganyi, Pastor Preaching, silkccreen monotype, 69,5 x 45,3 cm , R18 2464 excl VAT
Centre: William Kentridge, Rebus (Light), linocut, 40 x 29 cm, R54 600 excl VAT
Right: Abe Mathabe, Sabrina, drypoint, 12 x 10 cm, R2136.00 excl VAT
Workshop17 Kloof St Cape Town
THE SEVENTEEN
A rotating exhibition of 17 artworks by the
W17 Gallery and collaborators
Workshop17 Kloof Street, 32 Kloof Street, Gardens, Cape Town
THE SEVENTEEN launches the first exhibition between the W17 Gallery and its collaborators, opening with Artist Proof Studio. Artist Proof Studio (APS) is an innovative and engaged community printmaking centre of excellence. Their organisation is dedicated to every aspect of professional printmaking, including creation, sales, training, and community engagement. Artist Proof Studio was established in 1991 by Kim Berman and Nhlanhla Xaba as a printmaking center that embodied the spirit of a democratic South Africa. It emerged as a response to the need for unity and inclusivity, using printmaking as a powerful medium for expression.
The 17 artworks in this exhibition have been curated in collaboration with the W17 Gallery and APS as part of a long-standing and ongoing partnership to support local talent. The W17 Gallery exhibits artworks by various artists who have collaborated and printed with APS in Johannesburg. This exhibition is the first to show a selection of artists and their work at Workshop17 in Cape Town.
Urban Abstractions
A group exhibition featuring
Earl Abrahams,Mpho Matheolane, Marcus Neustetter, and Stephen Hobbs
This exhibition of multimedia work focuses on the wider possibilities offered by the marriage of medium and subject presented by thinking through the city. Cities are one of the great global phenomena, but also one of the world's great mysteries. Most of us share our lived experience of city life and urban identities, but it's often impossible to convey visually what it's like to have an urban existence, except to contrast it with rural or natural landscapes.
The artistic approach to the city seeks to create a set of abstract emotional responses to urban or 'macro-urban' phenomena.
Abstraction as a visual response to this cacophony, this proliferation of meaning and images, thus makes much emotional sense.
Each of the artists on show addresses the abstraction of urban reality in different ways.From Earl Abrahams' transfiguration of the city in his cyanotypes; to Mpho Matheolane's film photography prints as he questions the human role in a dehumanising cityscape. Marcus Neustetter shifts perspectives of how we map our own sense of place in his multimedia works; and Stephen Hobbs' artwork endeavours to simultaneously embrace and resist the city grid.
Urban Abstractions is currently on show at Workshop17 The Bank, 24 Cradock Ave, Rosebank
Curated by Koulla Xinisteris and James Sey of Gnosis Art in collaboration with the W17 Gallery
Top Right: Mpho Matheolane, Pedestrians, Crossing 1, Photograph, R12 000 excl VAT
Bottom Right: Stephen Hobbs, Field Tactics, Square Mask, paint on board, R27 000 excl VAT
Meet The Team
W17 Gallery is headed up by Claudia Bentel- Gallery Director- who curates and consults on all things art. Her vision for the gallery is to promote artists and their practice, educate people about art and create impactful spaces, she says: “We are a disruptive gallery in the sense that we are unmaking and remaking many of the traditions of the white cube towards making art more accessible in multiple ways…”
