Matthew Hindley (b. 1974, Cape Town, South Africa) graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town in 2002; where he was awarded the Michaelis Prize for the best final exhibition in his year.
As one of the South Africa’s most recognised emerging painters, Hindley’s intense, poetic and delving artworks have featured in various critical and seminal South African and international exhibitions. A series of solo shows charts a loose progression from figuration to abstraction. From the show “An Everlasting Once at Brundyn, in Cape Town (2011) to the transitional “The Divided Self” and climaxing with ’Double Rainbow’ (2021) mapped out the progression in his relationship with painting which evolved as a non-figurative exploration. Hindley’s practice has also maintained an interest in the possibilities of science to produce art, expressed in a number of key works.
Matthew Hindley has presented a short film at the world renowned Eli and Edythe Broad Museum, Michigan (2012) and the Kochi Muziris Biennale, India (2012). In 2014 he worked on a series of paintings inspired by the mythological African tales of South African writer Don Mattera, for a book published by Rhodeworks, in Berlin, Germany. In 2015 his artwork was part of the imago mundi, Benetton Collection at the Venice Biennale. Also in that year, Hindley participated in TWENTY: Contemporary Art From South Africa, which travelled from Turchin, Centre for the Visual Arts, North Carolina to the Beijing Biennale, China. In early 2019 his major public sculpture Speak Naturally and Continuously was upgraded and reinstalled above the entrance of the South African National Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa. and reopened to the general public. In 2021, Hindley was included in the survey show “National Identity” at the ESPRONCEDA Institute of Art and Culture in Barcelona, Spain, alongside acclaimed South African artists, including William Kentriade and Zanele Muholi.
“The rainbow is the expression of the infinite possibilities of colour, to the artist it’s the basis of the colour palette itself. The dispersal of white light into its component colours offers a kind of unlocking, a window into a miraculous world.”, Hindley 2021.
