Philippa Hobbs

Philippa Hobbs is a published South African art historian, an artist and an art collector. She was born in 1955 and matriculated at St Andrew's School in 1972. She studied art at the Johannesburg College of Art before finishing a post-graduate printmaking course at the University of the Arts (Philadelphia). She then furthered her studies through University of South Africa (UNISA) and the Technikon Witwatersrand. Hobbs was a senior professor of history of art at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg from 1988 to 1993. She has been noted for her contribution to the practice of art (with national and international exhibitions), art education, research and, most recently, community development through art. Hobbs currently works as MTN art collection curator and arts and culture portfolio senior manager.
Art
Hobbs was invited to contribute to the Images of Human Rights project in 1996, which involved artists making visual representation of each clause of South Africa's Bill of Rights. Hobbs' designated clause was Clause 8: Freedom of Expression, where her woodcut – Received by the Tongue' – shows the precarious balance between rights of expression and the subsequent consequences.
Other works by Hobbs include '''Dracunculus and Cat's Cradle, a woodcut produced in 1993, and Spiritus Candelabrae, a two-colour woodcut produced in 1992.
Teaching
Hobbs took classes and workshops from her own printmaking studio, Foot Print Studio. The studio started in order to offer visual training and printmaking guidance to beginners and advanced artists.
Publications
Hobbs co-published Printmaking in a Transforming South Africa with Elizabeth Rankin in 1997 (David Philip Publishers), which discusses how printmaking has "traversed the divisions of South African art" and describes the technical and expressive components of printmaking, while also exploring the role it played as a form of resistance during the liberation struggle.
In 2003, Hobbs and Rankin published Rorke’s Drift Empowering Prints, which looks at the Evangelical Lutheran Church Art and Craft Centre, more popularly known as Rorke's Drift Art and Craft Centre. Their article reviews the art produced by the black artists who studied at the workshop, including its first-enrolled student Allina Ndebele, whom Hobbs has researched extensively in other publications such as her 2011 Water and Space, 2014 Allina Ndebele’s Tree of Life, and 2018 Mantis Wedding: Performing Power in the Loom.
Hobbs' 2006 publication, Messages and Meaning, is a catalog for the MTN Art Collection of which she is curator. It is a collection of essays by writers such as Nessa Leibhammer, Elizabeth Rankin, Wilma Cruise and other prominent authors. It explores how the collection is "a tool for social investment, an educational resource, a means of inspiring in-house communication and debate, and a showcase of South African and African art to visitors".
Hobbs has also contributed to a well-known South African art publication, Taxi and frequently writes the corresponding Taxi Art Education Supplement for school teachers and learners, allowing the information to be easily accessible. These supplements contain worksheets, information boxes about otherwise challenging art concepts.
Awards
1975 Fine Art Award, Johannesburg College of Art
1978 Deans List (Philadelphia College of Art, USA)
1987 Rector's Medal, Technikon Witwatersrand (For Higher Diploma studies)
1987 Finalist and Merit Award winner, Volkskas Atelier Awards, Pretoria
1987 Chamber of Mines Award, TWR (For Higher Diploma studies)
1988 Finalist, AA Vita Awards, Johannesburg
1988 Finalist, Cape Town Triennale, Cape Town
1994 Alumnus Award, Technikon Witwatersrand
2004 Business Arts South Africa Award (Special Project) for exhibition and publication Rorke’s Drift: Empowering Prints
References
1955 births
Living people
South African art historians
University of the Arts (Philadelphia) alumni
Women art historians
20th-century South African women artists
21st-century South African women artists