News From Home is a production company with a focus on experimental and artist film. Created in collaboration between South African contemporary artists and filmmakers Victoria Wigzell, Simon Gush and musician Andrei van Wyk. News From Home seeks to facilitate the creation of new films with flexible approaches to make film production accessible. With each of its members having developed the practical and conceptual aspects of their work over time, News From Home brings together these varying approaches in a collaborative environment.
Our team
Simon Gush
Artist | FilmmakerSimon Gush is an artist and filmmaker living in Johannesburg. His research looks at the relationship between work, land and subjectivity. He has a postgraduate certificate in fine art, Hoger Instituut van Schone Kunsten, MA (sociology), University of the Witwatersrand, and he is currently pursuing a PhD (history), University of Fort hare. Solo shows include S.G., 59 Joubert Street, Johannesburg, Sala10, MuAC, Mexico City, Welcome to Frontier Country, Stevenson,
Cape Town (2019); Al final del trabajo, Ex Teresa Arte Actual, Mexico City (2018); 9 o'clock at the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown (2015); Red, Goethe-Institut, Johannesburg (2014); and 4 for Four, S.M.A.K., Ghent (2010). He has exhibited extensively including the Biennale: für aktuelle Fotografie, Ludwigshafen (2017); Dakar (2016); Bamako (2015 and 2017); Montevideo (2014) and Lulea (2009). Group shows include Every leaf is an eye, Göteborgs Konsthall, Göteborgs; African Mētrópolis. An Imaginary city, Maxxi, Rome (2018), Meditations on Place: Four Perspectives; Four African Cities, Cleveland Museum of Art (2018), Recent Histories -
New African Photography and Video Art, The Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm and Afriques
Capitales, La Villette, Paris. His films have been screened at the National Gallery of Art,
Washington DC; ICA, London; Tate Modern, London; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt, Berlin; Palais De Tokyo, Paris; and in a number of film festivals including International Film Festival Rotterdam, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and Visions du Réel.
Victoria Wigzell
Artist | FilmmakerVictoria Wigzell is an interdisciplinary artist based in Johannesburg (ZA). After completing an honours degree in Fine Arts at Wits University, Johannesburg, she went on to obtain an MFA in Arts in Public Spheres, from ECAV (now Édhea) in Sierre, Switzerland. She has participated in a number of local and international artist residency programmes such as, AIR Antwerpen (BE), The Embassy of Foreign Artists (CH) and Modern Arts Projects (ZA). Her solo exhibitions include, Rouge Belge at the Showroom Gallery in Antwerp, Chantier Valaisan at The Embassy of Foreign Artists in Geneva, and Books? Their Books? Out of Their Books Fall Out of Their Books? at Galerie 3000 in Bern. She has presented on her work at a number of international conferences, such as Arte y Desindustrialisation (CL), L’Ecole du Non-Travail in Annecy (FR) and The Design Indaba (ZA).
Wigzell’s critical interest in the framing of formal work as an estimation of value in everyday life has led her to the medium of film, in particular, documentary-style film. Her first artist film, Chantier Valaisan(2017), was developed while working closely with a group of Swiss construction workers and an affiliated local choir, in the Swiss Alps. Through a collaborative process, Wigzell helped realise a construction company owner’s dream of presenting the physical act of construction work as a work of art, set on the construction site as a theatre stage. Chantier Valaisan became a collectively realised film on the politics of work and leisure as they intersect with class and national identity in the idyllic Alpine setting.
In 2018, Wigzell directed a collaborative film production entitled, Tied Rope (written and edited by Phumulani Ntuli), which would go on to win the film category prize for the PPC Imaginarium Award. In the same year, she was awarded a script development grant from the National Video and Film Foundation of South Africa for her film, World of Trophies (2021).
Andrei van Wyk
Musician | Sound ArtistAndrei van Wyk is a musician and sound artist with a focus on hypertextuality, experimental
composition, muzak and the relations between sound, noise and music within the context of human experience. Through sound-collage, plunderphonics and free improvisation, van Wyk seeks to recreate and amplify significant aspects within basic human interaction and experience such as humour, boredom and loss, while placing them into broader historical narratives. He also performs in various other musical projects including in the Experimental Jazz band The Wretched alongside drummer Tumi Mogorosi and vocalist Gabisile Motuba and as a solo artist
with his industrial-noise project Healer Oran.
van Wyk’s sound work has been included in a variety of projects including the Basha Uhuru
Freedom Festival, Johannesburg; the FNB Joburg Artfair, Johannesburg and Sound in Art
Processes, Keleketla! Library, Johannesburg (all 2015) as well as a performer in Invisible Cities,
Johannesburg (2014); Edge of Wrong, Johannesburg, (2015/7); AMAZE festival, Johannesburg (2016) and is a contributing musician to Mute Sounds’ 1 minute autohypnosis Project. He has collaborated with artists Karin Tan and Skye Quadling on We felt a Rumble, you won’t believe
what happened next: ‘TO BE DETERMINED, GoetheonMain; (2016) and at Kunstefees,
Bloemfontein (2017). In 2017 van Wyk was a resident artist at MAP gallery, Richmond and at the Centre for the Less Good Idea, Johannesburg in 2018.
He has engaged in film work as a composer including the multi-award winning Mma Moeketsi by Reabetswe Moeti for which he was nominated for a Lake International Pan African Film Festival for best score. He is currently collaborating on a documentary with artist Simon Gush.
Our address
59 Joubert St, Johannesburg, 2001