Exhibitions/Publications
2026 ‘KunstRai x Rietveld Alumni - paralelepípedo: about paradoxical dreams, bodies and imaginaries’
Group Exhibition with fellow Rietveld alumni
Amsterdam, NL
2026 ‘Business in the Front’
Group exhibition
Amsterdam, NL
2025 ‘One’
Group Exhibition at Vrije Universiteit
With fellow 1st year MA students of Studio
for Immediate Spaces, Sandberg Instituut
Amsterdam, Netherlands
2024 ‘DDW x Rietveld Alumni’
Group Exhibition at Dutch Design Week
With Rosa Shepherd, Maja Wachowska, Juwan Moon, pán qi, Anna Klas, Jesse Andriesse
Eindhoven, NL
2024 ‘Presskuchen’
Group Exhibition at P////AKT Foundation
With Rosa Shepherd, Arvid Jansen, Oliver Bleckman, Tereza Kalousova, Zwaantje Kupershoek
Amsterdam, NL
2024 ‘A Duet’
Graduation exhibition at Gerrit Rietveld Academie
Amsterdam, NL
2023 ‘Soft Edges’
Group Exhibition at Zone2Source
With Rietveld + Uva students
Amsterdam, NL
2022 ‘Drawing Water’
Group exhibition at Tolhuistuin
With Architectural Design 1st + 2nd year students
Amsterdam, NL
2021 ‘A House is a Home’
Group exhibition at Dutch Design Week,
With Architectural Design 1st + 2nd year students
Eindhoven, NL
2018 ‘The Swim’
Exhibition at UKH
Aarhus, DK
2014
Coleen Ross group exhibition at Artvark gallery
Cape Town, SA
Shepherd, Rosa. The Frippery in the Fray - Adorning the Endings in Architecture. Space Issues, 2026.
Lee, R. and PETHYBRIDGE, R., 2019. Dancing through the Hard Stuff: Repetition, resilience and female solidarity in the landscape in Rosemary Lee’s – Passage for Par. p 471-487. In: THOMAS; H and PRICKETT,S., (eds), The Routledge Companion to Dance Studies. London: Routledge
Feris, L., O’Connell, S., Feris, L., English, A. (2024). My Third Ouma A Nama Midwife Story (N. Visser, R. Shepherd, Illus.) ESI Press and The Olive Exchange.
‘A length of Backsroke’
(2022)
‘A Length of Backstroke’ are two A1 hardcover publications. One for the right hand and one for the left. This project was an attempt to answer a question; can the designer of a book also act as a choreographer of the readers body? The books were designed in such a way that the reader was prompted to lift their arms above and over their heads - as though they were swimming a length of backstroke through the pages.
‘A Duet’
steel, graphite, paper
(2024)
‘A Duet’ plays with the relationship between a moving body and space. It is a proposal to consider the point of contact between a mover and the ground as the living spot/starting point from which a floorplan or spatial arrangement can grow. A floorplan which uses touch and the exchange of weight as tools of measurement to determine and make new 3-dimensional shapes in space.
To begin this project, I reached out to dancers I know both in South Africa and in the Netherlands to see if they would respond in movement while I watched. I focused my attention on the spots where their bodies had contact with the floor. These exact moments became my universe. Depending on the amount of pressure shared and time spent between body and ground, I developed a score. Eventually this score would become the basis on which I developed the designs for the 3-dimensional steel pieces. Each piece corresponding to a unique and fleeting moment of contact between dancer and ground.
A foot sweeping in an arc across the floor leaves behind a single line.
If the arc is made with the tip of the toe, the line of contact between mover and ground will be narrow, perhaps hardly present.
If the arc is made with the whole foot, the line of contact will widen.
Made with the whole body, the line of contact will be wider still.
And if the momentum of the arc is suddenly lost and the foot finds a resting spot on the floor, the line of contact will end in a solid point.
Using these observations and considering both mover and ground to be equal partners in design, any point of contact and consequential exchange of weight holds the possibility to become a floorplan and spatial arrangement. A dance, a child’s first steps, to swirl a finger across a surface; all of these things become littile architects in their own right.
I welded the pieces together using sheet steel and finished the surface with a scribbly look which links the project back to the original graphic score.
image by Rosa Shepherd
image by Rosa Shepherd
image by Jordi de Vetten
image by Benedikt Rittger
‘Summer Specimen’
(2022)
‘Summer Specimen’ is a typeface made during the Lepititclub Summer S/cool which took place in the Arboussols, France. Inspired by the architecture of Prieuré de Marcevol, three 6m long brushes helped to develope the ‘Summer Specimen’ typeface. These brushes were made to reach the floor/page from various high and awkward points of the building.
‘Billy’
(2022)
‘Billy’ is the concept for an architectural model based on movement. There is a particular scene in the film Billy Elliot directed by Stephen Daldry where the protagonist, Billy, is filmed dancing in a walled, brick courtyard located in County Durham, North East England. The camera captures Billy moving in such a way that each wall in the courtyard that he interacts with becomes just as important in understanding the scene as each if his footsteps and the way he twists and turns his body.
To capture this feeling in an architectural model, I noted down a language of dots and lines, corrosponding to each of Billy’s footsteps and leg movement. The dots represented a foot fall and the lines represented the movement of his leg. This gradually became a notational basemap that I was then able to use as the starting point for an architectural basemap.
Imagine each of Billy’s footsteps rising from the ground and becoming a column. Imagine each line rising to become a wall, or partition. Following this system, eventually a new way of dividing space will grow.
