Justin Brett completed his Master’s degree in Fine Art in 2009 at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town, where he taught for more than a decade in both the painting and sculpture departments.

He has participated in a number of notable group exhibitions in South African Museums such as Home Truths at the South African National Gallery (SANG) in 2016 curated by Professor Michael Godby, and US curated by Simon Njami and Bettina Malcomess at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG) in 2009 and SANG in 2010, respectively.

His latest body of work in ceramic, Pluto’s Font, employs an archeology of classical architectural forms and ancient mythology to imagine pools and geysers, springs and wells dislocated from under and other-worldly geological landscapes. As substrates for ground mineral pigments that are mined from deep earth and sprayed onto their clay surfaces, these objects emerge from the extremes of heat in the kiln as new material artifacts with which to excavate alternative cosmologies of the human relationship to landscape and environment.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2009
'Out of Sight', AVA Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2023
'Pluto’s Font', RMB Latitudes Art Fair, Reservoir Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa

2022
'Habits & Talismans', Reservoir Gallery, Investec Cape Town Art Fair, Cape Town, South Africa

2016
'Home Truths', The South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2010
'Us', The South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
'We don’t need names here', Spier Contemporary Art Competition Finalist, City Hall, Cape Town, South Africa
'The Marks We Make', Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
'Artworks in Progress', South African Pavilion, World Expo, Shanghai, China

2009
'Us', Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
'Us', Goodman Gallery Project Space, Johannesburg, South Africa

2008
'Baring', AVA Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
'Upstairs/Downstairs', AVA Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
'Come Again', The Michaelis Gallery, University of Cape Town and the Substation, University of Witwatersrand
'Fresh Meat', Whatiftheworld Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2007
'Come' ,The Michaelis Gallery, University of Cape Town and the Substation, University of the Witwatersrand

2006
'Glimpse', The Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

2003
'Orientation/Demarcation', The Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa