Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse

Artist biography:

Born: 1981, Cape Town, South Africa

Mikhael Subotzky has worked as a photographer since graduating from the University of Cape Town in 2004. His final-year university project, entitled Die Vier Hoeke (The Four Corners) consisted of an in-depth study of the South African prison system. It received widespread acclaim both in South Africa and internationally.

Subotzky's work has been widely exhibited, including a solo exhibition inside Pollsmoor Prison (2005), and in Basel, Miami, Bamoko, San Fransico, Amsterdam, Turin, Verona, Canary Islands, Rome, Paris, London and New York. In 2009 he received the Oskar Barnack Award, the 2008 W. Eugene Smith Memorial Grant, and the 2008 ICP Infinity Award (Young Photographer), as well as the Lou Stourmen Prize in 2009.

For the past two years he has been collaborating with the British artist, Patrick Waterhouse, on an extensive new body of work based in a single building in Johannesburg, Ponte City.

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Born: 1981, Bath, England

Patrick Waterhouse graduated with a BA from the Camberwell College of Art in 2003. Since then he has produced a variety of work in many different media including, drawings, prints, photographs, and artist's books. He has recently worked with Fabrica to publish a fully illustrated version of Dante's Inferno and has previously guest edited Colors Magazine and art-directed the Benetton social campaign, Africa Works.

Waterhouse's work has been exhibited at numerous venues including the South African National Gallery, Goodman Gallery Cape Town, Art Basel, and The Daimler Chrysler Collection and has been published in Granta, Wallpaper, and Du.

His long term project in collaboration with Mikhael Subotzky focuses on a single building in Johannesburg, Ponte City. The work is located in Berea's Ponte City building, an iconic structure in Johannesburg's skyline that has long been a symbol for the city itself. The artists have combined photography, historical archives, found objects, and interviews to create a body of work that spans the pre-history of the building, its spectacular decline, and the recent attempts at its transformation. The building is cast as the central character in a tangled narrative about Johannesburg's magnetic pull on people from all over the continent.