Do You Know the Place?

Aimee Lindeque

Long Gallery: 20.11.25 - 15.01.26

Do You Know the Place? is a series of paintings that began with a question I often ask when someone looks at my work. It opens up conversations about memory, recognition, and belonging.

This exhibition is a reflection on Cape Town, the city I have called home for over ten years. Most of the works focus on scenes from the City Bowl, where I have lived and know best. Getting to know the city’s structures, their forms, light, and shifting moods has been central to my process. Through painting, I have tried to understand how the city reveals itself, both in its permanence and its constant change.

Light plays a major role throughout the series. The exhibition loosely follows the rhythm of a single day, from the harsh yellow glare of morning to the soft electric glow of evening. Light becomes a way to explore how the city transforms and how our perception of it shifts with time.

Each painting contains three parts: something old, something new, and something natural. At first these elements appeared intuitively, but over time I began to include them deliberately. Together they highlight the layers of time and history within a space. The old architecture, whether art deco or built from weathered stone, holds traces of the past. The new tends to be electrical, a light post or a tangle of cables. The natural element, though hardest to find in a modern city, feels essential. A tree, a patch of sky, or a bird perched on a wire.

I work with a limited palette, a self-imposed restriction that often leads to unexpected results. The structure of my painting practice mirrors that of the city itself. Both are built on rules and boundaries, yet within them there is space for discovery and quiet beauty.

There are no people, words, or signs of security in these scenes. Their absence allows the architecture to speak for itself and invites viewers to project their own memories onto the spaces. The titles reflect my own experience with each place, but they are not fixed. They act as placeholders, leaving space for viewers to form their own connections and to name the places for themselves.

I am drawn to how a city’s history accumulates from its grand constructions to its quiet, personal moments. Bertram House, for example, was named after the lighthouse keeper of Mouille Point who was a friend of the building’s owner. Years later, it became a place where I waited for lectures and met friends on the brick steps. These shifts in meaning, from public to personal, are what keep me returning to the city as a subject. Each space carries its own timeline, constantly rewritten by those who move through it.

Association for Visual Arts .