Cape Form House, a design gallery in a converted tram depot in Cape Town’s Woodstock district, closed its exhibition Carry Forward on Sunday after 24 designers sat among the displays with copies of their original sketches. Eleven say ideas they submitted to a 2024 open call were later shown as finished work without their names or permission.
The protest prompted the gallery to suspend the show until 25 October and begin checking the submissions against the exhibits. The designers say 19 of the 31 displays — including sculpted bicycle seats for carrying children and matching bags — closely reproduce proposals they were told had not been selected.
Sketches beside the finished work
The gallery’s central room had been arranged as a timeline of urban travel: a row of padded child seats, a folding carrier and bags designed to sit across a bicycle’s frame. Protesters laid printed concept sketches beside several objects, inviting visitors to compare their shapes and details. Some left their places empty rather than stand beside the displays.
Mara Henriques, a product designer who took part, said her 2024 submission included a curved seat with a removable woven side pouch. A similar combination appeared in the exhibition under the gallery’s own design label, she said. “We didn’t protest because our ideas look alike. We brought dated submissions so people could see what happened,” Henriques said.
They asked us to imagine the future of carrying children, then displayed that future without our names.
Mara Henriques, product designer
Klaudia Kocsis, the exhibition’s curator, said applicants agreed to terms allowing the gallery to “develop themes emerging from the open call”. She said the team believed the displayed works were original prototypes, but acknowledged that the wording may not have made clear how submissions could be used. The gallery has offered to show applicants the signed forms and review each disputed item with its designer.
Funding and authorship under review
The Cape Arts Trust awarded the exhibition R4.8 million (about €245,000) for research, prototypes and public workshops, according to its published grant register. The gallery says R620,000 went to 14 selected designers in fees and materials. Protesters say several rejected applicants received only a R1,500 participation payment and no credit, even where they believe their concepts were reproduced.
André du Plessis-Harmse, the gallery’s director, said the funding would not be spent until the review was complete. He declined to say whether any of the disputed designers would be paid, but said the gallery would publish its findings and revise its submission terms. Two commercial sponsors have paused their final payments, the gallery confirmed.
The exhibition had drawn about 3,200 visitors since opening on 3 October, with tickets priced at R90. Bishnu Kapur, a design archivist at the fictional South Cape Institute of Form, said the dispute was unusual because the protesters had brought their own dated sketches into the exhibition, allowing visitors to judge the similarities directly. “The question now is not just who made the objects, but what applicants were told they were agreeing to,” he said.
The gallery says a review team will compare the original submissions, the exhibit labels and the signed application terms, then report by 2 November. Henriques and other designers say they will return when the show reopens, but will not accept the gallery’s proposed private meetings unless the findings and any changes to attribution are made public.
