Water is life. It flows through our bodies and the ecosystems we depend on. It nourishes plants, shapes landscapes and sustains all living things. Without it, there can be no regeneration, no farming, no future.

Presented by Spier Arts Trust, Hanien Conradie’s exhibition reflects the organisation’s continued commitment to supporting South African artists whose work explores social, cultural and environmental themes. At a time when droughts, floods and ecological crises are shaping our shared future, Water-Verse offers a deeply personal, yet universal meditation on our relationship with the natural world. It reminds us that water is not only a necessity but a presence, not only a backdrop but a companion.

Over the last decade, Conradie has engaged with rivers, droughts and floods, creating works where water is both medium and teacher. Through paintings, performance rituals and layers, the artist explores how water shapes landscapes and inner-scapes alike, asking us to reflect on our relationship with this most vital element.

This body of work is a tribute to the spirit of water: its fluidity, its power, its memory and its uncanny ability as a medium to express human consciousness – Hanien Conradie

Working with natural pigments such as clay, soot, ash and ochre, Conradie allows water to animate matter. In what she describes as a collaboration,

Water gives form to my emotions, moods and thoughts – and then disappears as it evaporates, leaving the pigment in place – Hanien Conradie

The exhibition unfolds in a loose chronology, mapping Conradie’s work and its evolving relationship with water over the last decade.
Raaswater (2015) re-sounds the silenced Hartebees River near Worcester, where Conradie’s grandmother once farmed. Polluted and empty today, the river once roared so loudly that it gave its name to the farm. By collaborating with its yellow clay, Conradie attempted to restore its lost voice.

Of Water and Invoking (2017) arose during Cape Town’s devastating drought, when Conradie researched Southern African rainmaking rites. Using clays from the Hartebees and Table Mountain rivers, Conradie painted waterscapes of lilies as both grief and prayer for rain.

In Dart (2018), she inscribed Eugène Marais’ words ‘Diep Rivier, Donker Stroom’ (‘Deep River, Dark Stream’) into the current. In the Tankwa Karoo desert – the ‘Place of Thirst’ – she performed gestures of longing that shaped the performance Reëndans (2019–2021). Inspired by Marais’ poem ‘Die dans van die reën’ (‘The dance of the rain’), this work honours rain as a spirit and a shy maiden whose dance brings renewal. In her Flood Series (2023), Conradie uses ancestral clay alongside chalk and ochres from Botswana to embody water’s powerful ability to transform familiar landscapes beyond recognition, and to reflect on the meaning of global floods. In the film Watervers (2025), the artist walks backwards into water and disappears in an immersion that considers water from below the surface, contemplating initiation and transformation.

During the first month of the exhibition, Conradie created a site-specific painting in the gallery space using local ochres and water from Spier’s ponds, and visitors were able to observe her process, gaining insight into both her practice and the life-giving work of water stewardship.

The choice of Spier Wine Farm as a venue is fitting: what may appear to be tranquil waterlily ponds at Spier are in fact part of a living water-recycling system in which 100% of the farm’s wastewater is cleaned and returned to the land. This approach to water mirrors Conradie’s practice: attentive, regenerative and rooted in respect.

Water-Verse is an invitation to slow down and listen: to rivers, rain, floods, silence – and to the traces that water leaves in us. Whether through Conradie’s clay paintings, her ritual performances or her meditative inks, the exhibition asks us to feel water as more than a backdrop. It asks us to recognise it as spirit, teacher and mirror of our own consciousness.
By visiting Water-Verse, you are not only witnessing an artist’s 10-year dialogue with water, but also entering into your own.

Visitor Information
Location: Old Wine Cellar, Spier Wine Farm, Stellenbosch
Dates: 31 October 2025 – 22 February 2026
Open daily from 9:00 – 17:00
Entry to the exhibition is free