How Art Thou?
There’s more to curating than meets the eye. RESERVOIR’s Shona van der Merwe and Heinrich Groenewald are writing the next chapter in South African art.
ART / 16.02.26
Read time / 11 mins
Mikael wears his take on an office t-shirt in a formal mid-weight cotton pique. On the blind behind him is the FIELDS brand totem, designed by Daniel Ting Chong.
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[01] The curator duo, Heinrich Groenewald and Shona van der Merwe, photographed by Jonathan Kope at their RESERVOIR gallery in Cape Town.
In the entrance hall, natural light refracts off the citrusy-orange front door, generating a welcoming glow.
The curator duo, Heinrich Groenewald and Shona van der Merwe, photographed by Jonathan Kope at their RESERVOIR gallery in Cape Town.
Hello and welcome
Shona van der Merwe and Heinrich Groenewald are pro athlete-level hosts and networkers. On an icy, though mercifully dry Cape Town winter evening, the curator duo opens their group exhibition, ‘Frequencies of the otherwise’ at RESERVOIR, their gallery on the 7th floor of a midtown Cape Town high rise. Artworks range from the detailed minimalism of Morné Visagie’s pencil-on-paper works and Mia Thom’s Listening Drawings, to Thato Makatu’s theatre-ready mixed media set pieces and a performance installation left by Marsi van de Heuvel.
Shona has the feminine, ageless features of the Broadway legend Sutton Foster, with extra curls to boot. Her greeting slices through any art-world pretence with genuine warmth. Then appears Heinrich, tall and dashing, with his sharp, observant sense of humour on constant simmer. Generous with tips and anecdotes from his recent Karoo vacation, he leaves Team HOMEY feeling comfortable and thoroughly oriented to explore the show. Both will circle back with the most fascinating tidbits about the artworks, artist process, and the curatorial journey to get them ready for their exhibition. The show is no small feat, but this duo makes it look effortless.
Beyond having an excellent eye, “the calibre of each one of them is substantial,” says curator and art adviser Amy Ellenbogen.
Shona has the feminine, ageless features of the broadway legend Sutton Foster, with extra curls to boot. Her greeting slices through any art-world pretence with genuine warmth. Then appears Heinrich, tall and dashing, with his sharp, observant sense of humour on constant simmer. Generous with tips and anecdotes from his recent Karoo vacation, he leaves Team HOMEY feeling comfortable and well-oriented to explore the show. Both will circle back with the most fascinating tidbits about the artworks, artist process, and the curatorial journey to get them exhibition-ready. The show is no small feat, but this duo makes it look effortless.
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Inside the RESERVOIR gallery, this prime example of Bella Knemeyer’s paper-based work is made from mulched lotto tickets, bar cashups, locksmith cheques, apology letters and tissue paper with pigments on aluminium composite boards. Wish you were here, wish here was better, 2023.
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Shona wears a Lezanne Viviers dress, echoing the Alexandra Karakashian artwork behind her. “It’s our creative output,” she says of curating. “And it is very personal because it’s our taste. A lot of the art we show is something we’d want to own and live with.”
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The earliest stages of exhibition planning, in this case for Bella Knemeyer’s 2023 RESERVOIR solo, ‘Something about this place’, involve doodles and Post-its.
Substantial calibre
RESERVOIR the physical gallery originally launched in 2021 as RESERVOIR Projects, a business without an address to represent Shona and Heinrich as a curator duo. The pair go as far back as their fine art studies, one year apart and only vaguely aware of each other at Stellenbosch University. Their working relationship – which puts your average work husband/wife pairing to shame – solidified at the dawn of COVID, fulfilling similar roles at a major Cape Town gallery. Fuelled by the energy of loosening lockdowns and harnessing their combined twenty years of experience, the pair decided to chart their own course, diving directly into collaborations with established galleries like What If The World and THK.
The show is no small feat, but this duo makes it look effortless.
Moving into a physical space in 2023, inside what is easily Cape Town’s most creative building, with neighbours ranging from illustrator (and HOMEY contributor) Koos Groenewald to fine artists (and friends of RESERVOIR), Pierre Vermeulen and Cathy Abraham, allowed them to formalise their work within a traditional gallery context on their own terms – at a slower, more mindful pace that allows for deeper engagement with artists and their work. The world responded enthusiastically: RESERVOIR’s booth at the 2023 Artissima fair in Turin, Italy, was awarded the New Entries Fund. In 2024, Shona and Heinrich announced their selection as honorary board members of SPARK Art Fair Vienna. Their February 2025 Investec Cape Town Art Fair booth won the Emerging Artist Award for Ben Stanwix and Xhanti Zwelendaba's Thaba Ncu. A month later in Spain, at ARCOmadrid, their Jeanne Gaigher solo presentation received the Fundación Banco Sabadell Young Talent Award.
Beyond having an excellent eye, “They are able to really hone in on stories and people as well as the work,” says curator and art adviser Amy Ellenbogen. “They both in their own right have extreme knowledge, and the calibre of each one of them is substantial.”
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Generating opportunities for up-and-coming artists is a source of pride for Shona and Heinrich. After Bella Knemeyer’s RESERVOIR solo show, her work was acquired by the IZIKO South African National Gallery. ‘Between holes 8 and 10, past the two palm trees’. 2023. Mulched paper with pigments. 180 x 128 x 5 cm.
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Building meaningful relationships with artists is a fundamental component of RESERVOIR’s curatorial process. This includes many a studio visit, as pictured here at Bella Knemeyer’s workspace.
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Shipping art across the world can be frustrating, but Shona and Heinrich take administrative challenges in their stride. “There’s something quite expansive about learning new things about how to run a business,” attests Shona.
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Heinrich, “art-ing around” in the RESERVOIR gallery lift. “There’s always a point at which things don’t go exactly as planned,” he says. “It’s about problem solving, solution making and working together.”
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RESERVOIR’s group exhibition at PSM Gallery in Berlin, ‘Chapter Three: Contemporary Archeology’, is the finale in a series of shows that brought 22 Southern African artists to the region. Here, Zimbabwean artist Gareth Nyandoro’s Musika WaBaba VaMike. 2019. Ink on paper, mounted on canvas, with vegetables and fruit. 300 x 535 x 110 cm.
The Projects component
The word ‘Projects’ was dropped from RESERVOIR’s name when Heinrich and Shona moved into their physical gallery space. “The Projects component,” as Heinrich refers to it now, remains a pivotal aspect of their work. It’s an “expanded multidisciplinary practice,” he clarifies. “If we just take 2025 as an example, we did projects with Mount Nelson, we were the official festival curators for the Toyota Stellenbosch Woordfees art programme, and consulted privately on a number of projects.” One of those was curating the art for a high-on-the-hill residence in Cape Town, the other is so major they’re not allowed to talk about it just yet. They’re also managing the production of an Inga Somdyala sculpture for the University of Cape Town.
“Projects is… interesting,” Heinrich muses. “That’s the glow. The sparkle. The, oh, you look different than everybody else.”
Financially, these projects support what’s hung at the galley, “to maintain the integrity of what we really want to show,” says Shona. “Instead of only showing works that are really commercial, to be able to show the type of work that we truly believe in, we need to find other ways to fund the work.” But that’s not to say that Projects represents secondary or less-desirable work – quite the opposite. It’s about expansion and innovation. “Projects in the [RESERVOIR] title might have fallen, but Projects is… interesting,” Heinrich muses. He and Shona are featured in Cultured Magazine’s 2025 inaugural Young Dealers list. They don’t underestimate the part ‘Projects’ played in that honour. “That’s the glow. That’s the sparkle. The, oh, you look different from everybody else.”
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Shona and Heinrich are working with artists from an expanding list of African countries, undeterred by the logistical intricacies. The Mozambican sculptor Luís MS Santos closed 2025 at RESERVOIR with his first South African solo show, ‘menino, não fala política’. Here, 2 wrong feet #2. 2025. Glazed terracota and steel 45 x 20 x 15 cm, from RESERVOIR’s RMB Latitudes 2025 installation.
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Curating requires equal parts hands-on and intellectual skill. Here, Shona and Heinrich install an Anna van der Ploeg solo presentation for the INVITED section of Art Brussels in 2024.
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At SPARK Art Fair Vienna 2024, RESERVOIR curated a solo booth by Pierre Vermeulen, who happens to have his studio a few floors above their Cape Town gallery. Pierre is a golden example of an artist whose career has developed alongside Heinrich and Shona’s.
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RESERVOIR’s group presentation at the 2024 RMB Latitudes art fair in Johannesburg received the Lexus Best Stand Award.
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A closer look at work from RESERVOIR’s award-winning RMB Latitudes presentation. Mikhailia Petersen. Towards the sun. 2024. Pigment Print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag. 90 x 75 cm.
A whole new story
“There’s something about being able to encourage not just experimentation, but growth for artists,” says Shona. She considers curating a creative practice that starts with a personal point of view, developing and growing to generate newness and momentum in the art industry. Heinrich adds that, “what eventually hangs on the wall, that is a whole new story being written.” He gestures around him at the ‘ANIMAL VEGETABLE MINERAL’ exhibit, a collaboration between artists Ben Stanwix and Xhanti Zwelendaba. “They have been collaborators, but on single artworks,” says Shona. “They have their own practises, which are incredibly interesting in themselves. But there is something about the conversion of their interests in land, the two voices from backgrounds that are both different and similar, that led us to suggest they do their first solo show together.”
“There’s something about being able to encourage not just experimentation, but growth for artists,” says Shona.
RESERVOIR shows generate significant opportunities for artists. Ben and Xhanti followed ‘ANIMAL VEGETABLE MINERAL’ with their first institutional exhibition at the Stellenbosch University Museum as the Festival Artists for the 2025 Toyota Stellenbosch Woordfees.
“As gallerists who have a focus on thought-provoking and experimental practices, it will often fall within our scope to present an emerging artist’s first-ever solo exhibition,” says Shona. “Seeing the development, where someone can give up their part time job and become a full time artist – someone like Bella Knemeyer, whose work was acquired by the IZIKO South African National Gallery from her first solo with RESERVOIR – makes us really proud. There’s something about that, like adding to history in a way.” Even for Heinrich and Shona themselves, who paid RESERVOIR’s first few months of rent with an artwork donated by an artist: “it’s all generated out of nothing, I suppose, and relationships.”
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Spatial artist Inga Somdyala’s relationship with RESERVOIR spans numerous shows, studios and residencies. From PSM Gallery in Berlin, an installation view of his work, The Deep History, The Long Past (series). 2024. Soil, ochre, oxides, rope, brass on canvas. Dimensions variable.
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RESERVOIR’s poster for Keith Henning’s ‘WATERSPORTS — Not for public consumption’ solo show features one of the artist’s (and AKJP Studio founder) stoneware and stainless steel fountains.
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Ben Stanwix and Xhanti Zwelendaba’s Thaba Nchu (2025) is just under four and a half meters wide, made up of almost 4000 fabric swatches, each one personally steamed by Shona to prep the work for RESERVOIR’s Investec Cape Town Art Fair 2025 booth where it won the Investec Emerging Artist Award.
Planes, cranes and automobiles
There’s no escaping the physical and logistical challenges of art curation, especially on a global scale. Shona and Heinrich have proven themselves and then some. Stairwell too small? They’ll crane the artwork out of the studio through the window – no problem. Heinrich, ignoring his fear of heights in the name of productivity, once spent hours stuck underneath a hot ceiling on a faulty cherry picker. There’s also the tale of the (unnamed for obvious reasons) artwork that spent the night at an Italian stranger’s home because a stubborn bus driver refused to take it on board. But nothing quite compares to the exhibition in Berlin where, three days before opening, Shona and Heinrich discovered the container with all their artworks never left Cape Town – they had nothing. And even then, after what they describe as a stress nap, the pair regrouped, and with the help of local connections put together an entire show in record time.
Neither curator resents the logistical cost of their creative goals. “It’s like producing a film,” Heinrich says.
Other memories are conversely sweet, like the five-hour drive from Munich to Vienna in a very large van (per Heinrich: “there are apartments in Cape Town for rent the same size”) – a key bonding experience. Neither curator resents the logistical cost of their creative goals. “It’s like producing a film,” Heinrich says. “The props, the lighting, the this, the that… the whole admin component is just a thing that you do to get to the thing that you’re doing.”
“Exactly,” Shona agrees.
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The first artwork Heinrich and Shona purchased for themselves, from their first Investec Cape Town Art Fair in 2023 by Anna van der Ploeg. The transformation of the greatest story never told into the greatest letter never written gate. 2023. Acrylic on carved plywood.
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Heinrich pulls focus at RESERVOIR’s 2023 booth, ‘ALT Section’, at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair.
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The poster for RESERVOIR’s solo presentation of Zimbabwean painter Richard Mudariki in New York at The Armory Show, 2025.
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Work by Luís MS Santos (left) and Seretse Moletsane at RESERVOIR’s 2025 RMB Latitudes installation. This Johannesburg art fair, annually in May, comes highly recommended by Shona and Heinrich.
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At the ‘Frequencies of the Otherwise’ group show, two Morné Visage pencil-on-paper works echo geometric views from RESERVOIR’s 7th-floor gallery.
More than friends
RESERVOIR invests heavily in its relationships with artists, fulfilling roles that shift and evolve between kinship, therapeutic support and coaching –not so much collaborators as creative doulas. Some of these relationships go all the way back to their studies at Stellenbosch University. “I think about this a lot,” says Shona. “The first time you do a show with what has essentially been a friend for a long time, do people see this as, oh, you’re just doing shows with your friends? Or is it that we have now developed alongside each other for the last ten years, and you end up surrounding yourself with people that you find incredibly ambitious and admirable? They have very successful careers independently, and then we decide to do something together because we’re both at a point where we can do that. And then, yes, it's incredibly rewarding and successful.”
But. “It's not just the close friends,” says Shona. Curating happens at the intersection of extensive research about artists and the ability to access them through a network which takes years to build. “You have to know that artist – know their work well enough to be able to approach them.” Heinrich is proud to have reached a point where they can, “call people up, and without necessarily having the whole curatorial statement ready, you can ask someone to get on board, and receive an affirming, ‘I love what you’re doing, I trust you with my work’.” —
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Heinrich points out this Inga Somdyala as a particularly significant work from their FNB Art Joburg 2023 booth, as it relates to South African history. Res Publica II, 2023. Transvaal soil, iron oxides, chalk, ash, waxed thread and atlas maps of Southern Africa on canvas. 163 x 89 cm.
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On a curatorial misadventure, Heinrich, with his fear of heights, was stuck on this faulty cherry picker in Berlin for hours.
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It took Heinrich and a team of eight men to install Ibrahim Mahama’s reclaimed (and particularly heavy) wooden Stranger to Lines II (2020) at the WHATIFTHEWORLD × Krone Gallery for the ‘Seeds of the Fig’ group exhibition in 2022. “I think it was too traumatic for me to film or photograph it while it was happening,” Shona laughs wryly.
Curators
SHONA VAN DER MERWE + HEINRICH GROENEWALD
Website
Cape Town Gallery
