Cameron Platter was born in 1978 in Johannesburg, and lives and works outside of Durban. He makes stories, pictures, and objects that are documents of contemporary morality. He describes his work as exploring a reality stranger than fiction through fantasy, satire, and subculture, using themes appropriated from the universal concerns of sex, love, violence, beauty, advertising, food, battle scenes, pornography, writing, politics, religion, crime, dancing, lust, greed, things falling apart, and spaceships. Working from everyday experience with subjects overlooked or considered delinquent, sordid, or lowbrow, he reconnoiters notions and concepts on the outside fringes of South Africa’s popular culture.
Platter has had solo exhibitions at WHATIFTHEWORLD / GALLERY, Cape Town (2014, 2011, and 2010), Jack Bell Gallery, London (2013), Galerie Hussenot, Paris (2012), and KZNSA Gallery, Durban (2008). He has participated in group exhibitions at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2011), Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town (2011), Haus Der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2011), MARTE, Museo de Arte de El Salvador, San Salvador (2011), Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2010), and the Biennial of Contemporary Art, Dakar, Senegal (2010). His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; FRAC Centre, Orleans, France; and Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town.
