Eloise Schoeman

Eloise Schoeman was born in Bristol, UK and lived there until 2008, before relocating to South Africa where she lived until moving to Pretoria for University in 2017. She relocated to Plymouth, United Kingdom to study her Masters in Painting at Plymouth College of Art in September 2021.

Schoeman has worked for Tshwane University of Technology as a Student Assistant in the Printmaking Faculty, as a Tutor for the Drawing and Printmaking Faculty and gallery assistant at Lizamore and Associates Gallery. In 2021, she was a recipient of a scholarship for her Advanced Diploma: Fine and Applied Arts at Tshwane University of Technology where she graduated with Cum Laude. Schoeman showed in her first focused duo-exhibition, LIGHT YEARS, with Marnus Strydom at Lizmore & Associates Gallery, with selected works then featured in various Gautrain stations across Gauteng, South Africa, for three weeks.

In previous works Schoeman has focused on capturing mundane intimate moments that one would share with complete strangers on a daily basis - the act of commuting, taking inspiration from street photography and the voyeuristic feeling even as a first-hand participant of the moment. Schoeman has spent the last fourteen years living in South Africa, a country where women’s issues are seen as a woman’s issue. In her new body of work, she has dug deeper into her own female experience and how she can further reflect her emotions, conscious and unconscious subtleties of her experience in a developing country as a woman, into the images she takes of passers-by in the UK.

How does the female gaze change from a developing to developed setting? Schoeman constantly finds herself comparing her experience living in Pretoria and Johannesburg to the almost naive existence of living in the United Kingdom, speaking to women who are in disbelief of the normalities women in South Africa encounter. By superimposing these emotions of unease, fear and hyper-awareness onto images of women in the UK by manipulating subtleties such as colour and contrast, she changes the dialogue from just being a singular experience to one that all women can relate to a degree.

Selected exhibitions include: LIGHT YEARS, Lizamore & Associates Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa 2021; Reflections, Retro Rabbit, Pretoria, South Africa 2021; IMITATION OF LIFE, Lizamore & Associates Gallery, Johannesburg South Africa 2021; Eclectic Salon, The Art Room, Johannesburg, South Africa 2020; In Limbo, Trent Gallery, Pretoria, South Africa 2020.

/* Schoeman has dug deeper into her own female experience and how she can further reflect her emotions, conscious and unconscious subtleties */