Bronwyn Lace is a visual artist who has collaborated with William Kentridge on the founding and establishing of The Centre for the Less Good Idea.

For Botswana-born Lace, who currently works between Austria and South Africa, her artistic practice is concerned with the relationship between art and other fields such as physics, literature, philosophy, museum practice, education, and more. Site-specificity, responsiveness, and performativity are also central to her practice, and have informed a great deal of her early work. Similarly, a balance between an isolated, introspective studio process and a collaborative, communal process sees Lace embracing incidental discoveries underpinned by an informed pursuit of new ideas.

In early 2016, when Lace was living and working in Johannesburg’s Maboneng, she was contacted by Kentridge and asked to join him in a discussion on an idea for an experimental incubator space for the arts. Lace was to work alongside Kentridge and his team, helping to establish a space that would ultimately become The Centre for the Less Good Idea. Since then, Lace has worked to drive and facilitate The Centre through its various Seasons, FOR ONCE programme and the curation of its many online and public art projects, first as Animateur for The Centre and now as a director on the board. Currently, Lace also oversees The Centre’s broader projects and visions, in particular the formation of the SO Academy alongside international partnerships for the Centre.

For Lace, whose own work grapples with themes of transition, mortality, illuminating thresholds, and finding a physical form for collapse, The Centre holds a strong methodological and philosophical resonance. Working to hold the myriad and often intangible processes of artists, seeking out new ways of seeing and introducing disparate threads to their work is a role that she’s occupied since The Centre’s inception. Working alongside the production and technical teams, as well as the invited curators, choreographers, directors, composers and dramaturgs leading a process, and providing a space for encouragement and understanding is also central to Lace’s role at The Centre.

At present, Lace’s position between South Africa and Austria also sees her working to establish relationships between The Centre and other collaborative, experimental arts spaces and institutions across the globe.

PHOTOGRAPHER | Adine Sagalyn