Tamlin Blake Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1974 -

Tamlin Blake (born 1974) is a South African mixed media artist living and working in Riebeeck West. The major themes of Blake's work revolve around cross-cultural South African symbols of wealth and status and, more recently, what constitutes and underpins each individuals sense of belonging.[1] Her sculptural pieces often transcend boundaries between illustration, craft, and art, using weaving, beading, and drawing, amongst other media.[2]

The main body of Blake's beaded art works took the form of South African stamps finely woven using glass seed beads.[3][4] “By replicating these original stamps in a traditional craft idiom that has such a strong association with indigenous African cultures , Blake offers a genteel but acerbic reference to [South Africa’s] troubled past.” (Innes 2012: pg20 ISBN 978-0-620-52880-1).

While working on her own bead art Blake helped Jeanetta Blignaut, to establish a bead studio which today exists as the Qubeka Bead Studio, a collaborative owned by the bead artists themselves.

After this Tamlin used a variety of different media including three-dimensional pieces in felt and beads to explore the use of farm animals as valued commodities and symbols of wealth and status across the boundaries of race and culture.[5][6]

Blake's more recent work consists of tapestries woven out of recycled and hand-spun newspaper [7][8] a collection of which were bought by The Spier Holdings Contemporary Art Collection [9]