The Melrose Gallery's new exhibition, Junkyard Dogs, brings together two towering figures of South African art — Pitika Ntuli and Dr Willie Bester — in a show that refuses politeness and insists on truth. Co-curated by Ashraf Jamal and Tumi Moloi, the exhibition runs from 29 August to 31 October 2025 in Johannesburg.
Both artists are scavengers and seers. They work with what industry has discarded — scrap metal, granite, bone, stone, forgotten objects — and reassemble it into sculpture that commands the room. Their practice is rooted in a culture of resistance, yet neither is an ideologue. The politics of the work is implicit, carried in the concentrated energy of each piece rather than declared as slogan.
The "junkyard dogs" of the title are fierce, loyal, unbreakable guardians — an apt description of two artists forged by the long fight for freedom. Ntuli, born in Springs in 1940 and raised in Witbank, was exiled, imprisoned and released only in 1978 after international pressure. He went on to study at Pratt Institute and Brunel University, lectured at Central St Martin's and Wits, and was named a Living Legend by the City of Johannesburg. His skeletal forms in metal, wood, stone and monumental granite speak of loneliness, loss and the pillaging of a continent — yet carry a persistent wit.
Bester, working from Kuilsrivier in the Western Cape, is widely regarded as one of the country's most important resistance artists. He scours scrap yards for the raw material of his paintings, assemblages and steel sculptures. The shoes of missing children, the symbols of apartheid, the textures of informal settlements all surface in his work to bear witness to what society would rather forget.
Together in Junkyard Dogs, installation meets sculpture meets soundscape. It is, as the curators suggest, animistic rather than political, Dionysian rather than Apollonian — a love-song to decay and a reckoning with past, present and possible future. Rust, as the saying goes, never sleeps.
https://themelrosegallery.com/viewing-room/49-junkyard-dogs-with-pitika-ntuli-and-willie-bester/
