Ross Passmoor a sculptor, print maker and painter primarily works from his studio in Johannesburg South Africa, lecturing part time. Passmoor born in Durban (1984) and raised in Pietermaritzburg obtained his Masters in Fine Art at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He taught art at St. Benedict High School in Pinetown for two years before deciding to practise art full time.
Passmoor moved to Johannesburg in 2012, where he currently lives, to pursue his career as an artist further. He had a residency at Assemblage’s NewARC studios as well as at the Bag Factory Studios, as a David Koloane Award winner. Passmoor while continuing with his practice is currently completing a PhD at Wits School of Art.
He has shown work at numerous fairs and gallery’s including: Turbine Hall Art Fair, FNB Joburg Art Fair, Gallery 2, Lizamore and Associates, Washington Print Gallery, Bayliss Gallery, KZNSA, Wits Art Museum and others. He has also been a finalist in multiple competitions including; Sasol New Signatures, Absa Atelier, Nivea Art Awards, the SA Taxi Art Awards and he previously was awarded the David Koloane Award.
Artist Statement
Suburban detritus forms the starting point for my works. I collect throwaway materials from in and around my suburban home and I reworks these materials into sculptural installations. Beyond these sculptural pieces, I uses collage, painting and printmaking as a way of processing the material visually to assist in both the building of the installations and as a kind of archival document of the larger works. My work explores the pastness of materials and challenges modernist assumptions surrounding nostalgia. In working with these materials I root myself in the suburban space and build a new, imperfect and somewhat broken history for both myself and the material. Through this engagement with the material, I rework my own perceptions of the mundane materiality of the suburb and tease out the potential for narrative, myth, sacrality and a loose non-specific plural history in the form of pastness, situated uneasily at the intersection of satire and epic.
