Pierre Fouché

Pierre Fouché (b. 1977, Pretoria) introduces himself as a lacemaker. This designation highlights his interest in the techniques, materials, histories, and social relevance of textiles. His respect for technique, tradition, and innovation has earned Fouché his place within the craft establishment as an internationally respected practitioner and teacher of contemporary bobbin lace. His penchant for arcane media and aesthetics has led his practice to include macramé, drawn thread embroidery, encaustic painting, and pinhole photography, as well as traditional painting, drawing, and printmaking. Thematically, his work focusses on portraiture and the gaze, photography and representation, appropriation, and web-media cultures, as well as some forays into overt queer politics. Often informed by world art history, his desire to understand the machinery of contemporary visual cultures tends toward the Romantic. His consistent marriage of iconography with craftsmanship also contributes to this reading. 

Fouché achieved his MA in Fine Arts from the University of Stellenbosch in 2006. In 2018 he was the featured artist of the Andorran city of Escaldes- Engordany’s 12th Textile and Glass Symposium. Notable group exhibitions include Lace/not lace at the Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, New Jersey; Crafted: Objects in flux at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (2018), Women’s work at the Iziko South African National Gallery (2016), as well as the touring exhibition, Queer Threads: Crafting Identity and Community, first exhibited at the Leslie + Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York (2015). His work is represented in the public collections of 

the Iziko South African National Gallery and the Artphilein Foundation, Switzerland.