Gradex. Stellenbosch Visual Arts Department Degree Show 2025

Artist list

Olivia Beauchamp, Lucy Bischof, Leah Brugge Van Niekerk, Salome Letsolao, Juliette Peta Lindup, Ingrid Nienaber, Megan Anne Willemse

Gradex presents works that explore a wide range of themes across the three disciplines offered in the Visual Arts Department at Stellenbosch University.

More than a showcase of final projects, Gradex marks an important moment of transition, celebrating the achievements of emerging practitioners while supporting their entry into the broader creative and cultural industries. The exhibition offers visitors an opportunity to engage with new voices, innovative ideas, and diverse creative practices that reflect the vitality and critical engagement of the next generation of artists and designers.

Gradex 2025 presents a diverse body of work that engages with a wide range of themes, questions, and creative approaches across the three disciplines offered within the Visual Arts Department at Stellenbosch University.
 
Within the Creative Jewellery and Metal Design programme, jewellery is understood as far more than adornment. We approach jewellery design as a critical and reflective discipline, one that encourages students to engage thoughtfully with the world around them and to translate ideas, experiences, and observations into three-dimensional wearable objects. Through this process, jewellery becomes a powerful medium for communication, capable of provoking dialogue and inviting reflection.
 
Our teaching philosophy recognises jewellery as a multifaceted design practice through which issues of identity, belonging, memory, place, social structures, cultural traditions, and political realities can be explored and articulated. The works presented in Gradex 2025 embody this approach, showcasing the ways in which the graduating class has used material, form, and concept to respond to the complexities of contemporary life. Together, these works demonstrate the capacity of jewellery and object-making to challenge assumptions, foster connection, and offer new ways of seeing and understanding the world


Guiding teachers:

• Dr Joani Groenewald (Jewellery Division Coordinator/ Lecturer).
• Ms Mariambibi Khan (Lecturer).
• Ms Carine Terreblanche (Senior Lecturer).