Marlise Keith’s ‘Murmuration’ Lands at HUB Gallery
HUB Gallery opens its 2026 programme with a compelling mini retrospective: ‘Murmuration’, a focused 20-year overview of work by Cape Town-based multimedia artist Marlise Keith. Running from 16 February to 17 April 2026 at HUB Gallery, the exhibition gathers key works spanning two decades, offering a rare opportunity to see the arc of a singular South African voice in one cohesive space.
An award-winning artist with a Master’s degree in Fine Art and a career stretching close to three decades, Keith has exhibited widely both locally and abroad. Her practice has been recognised through accolades including the Sanlam Vuleka Art Award and a Top 10 placement in the Absa L’Atelier — achievements that signal both critical and institutional respect. Yet it is the emotional complexity and imaginative intensity of her work that linger long after the awards are listed.
A World Built from ‘Mental Soup’
Keith describes the engine of her practice as her ‘mental soup’ — a swirling mix of memories, pets, migraines, news headlines, roadside memorials, colonial residues, dreams and everyday oddities. In her hands, violence and tenderness sit side by side; whimsy rubs shoulders with discomfort.
Defying neat categorisation, she constructs layered worlds from fragments — some precious, some disposable — interrogating how we assign value and meaning. Assemblage, sculpture and large-scale drawings embedded with three-dimensional elements coalesce into her distinctive low-relief sculptural style. The effect is at once playful and unsettling, intimate yet socially alert.
A Decades-Long Relationship
‘Murmuration’ includes significant works collected by the Spier Arts Trust (SAT), alongside some of Keith’s earliest assemblages and sculptures. The decision to stage this mini retrospective is rooted in a long-standing relationship between the artist and SAT.
“Spier Arts Trust has had the privilege of acquiring Marlise Keith’s work for more than two decades,” says Chief Curator Tamlin Blake. “Among the many artists we have collected over time, her work remains singular, not only for the strength and consistency of her practice, but for the depth of her engagement with our artistic community.”
Keith’s involvement has extended well beyond exhibitions. She has collaborated with HUB studios in beading and mosaic, taught at the Spier Arts Academy, lectured and mentored emerging artists, and contributed enthusiastically to the Creative Block programme. Through SAT, she also participated in Nando’s “Feast Your Eyes” pop-up in Soho in 2017 and the 1-54 African Art Fair in London in 2019 — moments that positioned her work within a broader international dialogue.
New Work, Unfamiliar Territory
Alongside foundational pieces, ‘Murmuration’ debuts Keith’s newest challenge: paintings on irregular-shaped canvases. These awkward silhouettes and complex compositional demands deliberately push her into uncomfortable terrain, marking a bold new chapter in her evolving visual language.
The title of the exhibition carries its own poetic weight. A murmuration refers to the low, indistinct sound made by a flock of starlings moving in synchrony — their collective motion believed to confuse predators and transmit information seamlessly. For Keith, the metaphor is apt.
“I imagined all my works communicating with each other (with no degradation) and what that would sound like. Themes repeat across the years, but what once shouted is now softened by its neighbour. The result is a murmuring that is no less powerful, a protective collective that guards the subjects still too daunting, too confusing or too subliminal to articulate in neat words,” she says.
Seen together, the works form a layered chorus — darkly humorous, emotionally charged and deeply reflective. This distilled survey offers audiences a rare window into the shifting, textured imagination of one of Cape Town’s most compelling artists.
All the details
When: 16 February to 17 April 2026
Where: HUB Gallery, Union House, 25 Commercial Street, Cape Town
Instagram: @house_union_block, @marlise.keith, @Spierartstrust
Facebook: House Union Block, Marlise Keith
More information: houseunionblock.co.za
Credits
Images: Supplied