POSTCARDS TO AND FROM THE FUTURE

at BELLHAUS Atelier & Galerie

Imagine you could send a postcard to the future – what message would you leave behind? A love letter to what you cherish? A warning?A quiet whisper, hoping to be heard?

These questions lie at the heart of POSTCARDS TO AND FROM THE FUTURE, an evocative exhibition at BELLHAUS Atelier & Galerie by artists Jacquie Tarr and Trevor Nott.

These artists are both time travelers and storytellers, crafting messages in paint, sculpture, and abstraction – each piece a note from the past, present, or a future yet to unfold.

Through layers of charcoal, ink, and crayon, Jacquie Tarr’s mixed-media works capture personal and planetary grief. Memories that refuse to be forgotten.

“While painting these images, I occupied a liminal space. I drew on my experience of overwhelming loss: the recent, tragic death of our son; the terror of being surrounded by a raging veld fire; and not least of all, witnessing the forfeiture of biodiversity and ecological integrity at the hand of humankind’s insatiable consumerism and exponential use of fossil fuels and synthetic chemicals.

Both as mother and environmentalist, contemplating the spaces that emerge when looking forward and backward in time has meant confronting bereavement on both a personal and global level.”

Trevor Nott, meanwhile, sculpts with time itself, shaping fallen wood (never living trees) and stone into relics that feel like messages from another world.

As I take one final glance around the room, a sculpture from Nott stands out to me: light brown Boscia albitrunca wood (commonly known as Shepherd’s Tree in southern Africa) has been carefully carved into two figures, both slightly stooped, leaning in towards each other. As if we have just caught them mid-whisper sharing a secret. It is titled: ‘Confide in me’.

It strikes me that the natural world beckons us to take on a similar posture: quiet our greed-stuffed, synthetic appetites, lean in closer – and listen.

Will we take notice, act, or allow the fires to rage?

Loss, with all its painful myriad of far-reaching implications, experienced both intimately and globally, are poignantly expressed in this affecting and prescient exhibition, which still glimmers with a different kind of flame - one not as destructive as a veld fire, but of hope.

During the exhibition, visitors to the gallery have the opportunity to purchase original postcard-sized artworks by Jacquie Tarr. Proceeds from these postcards will support Save the Rhino Trust, helping to ensure that Namibia’s rhinos remain a part of our living world and not just a picture in a history book.

Chief Operating Officer of Save the Rhino Trust, Andrew Malherbe, attended the exhibition's opening night at BELLHAUS Atelier & Galerie. Malherbe expressed amazement, saying, 'Since we began our work in 1983, Namibia's rhino population has quadrupled. Even back then, some of you standing here this evening were writing postcards to your future selves through your continued support. Thank you.”

Jacquie adds: “A postcard to the future enables us to acknowledge and appreciate what we have right now; something that could be lost or altered over time. A postcard from the future encourages us to think about how things might change, for better or worse, based on our past and current choices.”

Postcard in hand, you are not only sending a message to the future, but to the present. One of hope, action, and preservation.

Together, their works remind us that what we treasure today may one day be just a faded image, a relic, or – if we act – a legacy that endures.

So, what will your postcard say?

“...I contain multitudes…for every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you…" taken from Song of Myself (1855) by Walt Whitman.

“And nobody gets out of it, having to swim through the fires to stay in this world.” Extracted from the poem, ‘Dogfish’ (2010) by Mary Oliver.

“Your body is away from me but there is a window open from my heart to yours. From this window, like the moon I keep sending news secretly.” The Window by Rumi.

Madeleen Duvenhage