CAPE TOWN

ARTIST PROOF RETROSPECTIVE

a solo exhibition by Joshua Miles

6 - 27 November 2025

Joshua Miles | Pine line | Woodcut print | 42cm x 56cm.

WORLDART is pleased to announce celebrated landscape artist Joshua Miles’s artist proof retrospective to open on Thursday 6 November at its gallery in Cape Town.

This exhibition has been in the planning for a number of years and is the third part of a trilogy of exhibitions based on the release of Miles’s extensive collection of artist proofs. The first two were ‘The Overberg’ which was on exhibition at Hermanus FynArts gallery and ‘The Karoo’ which was shown at the Prince Albert gallery. This exhibition is titled ‘Cape Town’.

Joshua Miles has been working full time as an artist throughout his career. His main focus is limited edition reduction prints, first in woodcut and more recently in linocuts. He does limited editions of ten handmade prints and two artist’s proofs. Once the edition is sold out there is no running off a few more as the block is destroyed in the reduction print process.

Joshua is inspired by the loose mark making of the impressionists using his chisels to make the marks and the Japanese technique of selective rolling using his rollers like paint brushes to apply the inks. Because of his passion for working in this process he has worked prolifically and as a result has built up a large collection of artist proofs. An artist proof is a print taken in the printmaking process where the artist can see the current state of the print being worked on. Joshua makes his proofs to test the colour and cut before continuing with each layer of his edition. They are almost always as identical to the edition as a handmade print can be. Artist proofs normally belong to the artist and by convention the artist is not supposed to sell these with the edition. Art curators, collectors and historians view the proofs as especially desirable due to their rarity.

Joshua is releasing this collection of proofs, which has never been shown together before, as a retrospective of his iconic Cape Town images and this is a rare opportunity to view the entire collection together.

The exhibition opens on Thursday 6 November and is followed by a gallery walkabout with the artist on Saturday morning at 11am on the 8th of November.

For more information or assistance contact the gallery at +27 21 423 3075 or info@worldart.co.za