Ché Hough
Ché Hough is a sculptor and material researcher working from Pearly Beach, near Cape Agulhas.
My studio is sited at Pearly Beach (34°40′S 19°30′E), a coastal exposure site near Cape Agulhas, where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet. My practice treats sculpture not as autonomous objects for passive viewing, but as spatial interventions that physically reconfigure the architectural container. Grounded in 139,500 nautical miles logged across more than twenty years at sea, the studio investigates sillage, the lingering footprint of movement through fluid mass. I extract the forces that govern that displacement (drag, vector load, turbulence) and translate them into material form: work that operates as a series of physical obstacles, interrupting the viewer’s trajectory, altering experiential volume, and re-coding the built environment through the strict logic of physical law.
Field Research
The Dutch–French Caribbean & Global WatersI arrived in Simpson Bay, Sint Maarten, in November 1995, two months after Hurricane Luis. The island became the base of my professional yachting career, the point from which voyages departed and to which they returned. From there I worked between Sint Maarten, Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy, and in the hurricane season moved south for extended stays in the outer Caribbean: the ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao), Trinidad & Tobago and Venezuela. These became the main geographical sites of my spatial work.
During the 2000 season, I established a physical baseline for these environments: logging dive hours across the dense structural topography of the reef systems of Bonaire and Curaçao, and taking my first kitesurfing lessons in Aruba.
When I returned in 2007, my work had shifted from observation to intervention. I was now the only licensed officer aboard, with my Dutch co-navigator as Chef/Mate. Kitesurfing alone in demanding conditions, with no support nearby, I began carving dense yoga foam into traction pads and foot hooks for my strapless board. That modification is one of the starting points of the studio’s material practice: physical mass shaped in relation to kinetic force.
Material Research
From the Engine Room to the StudioMy material vocabulary was established on deck and in the engine room, across more than twenty years of vessel maintenance and marine engineering, largely aboard explorer-type vessels such as the Nordhavns, and Dutch- and German-built steel hulls: a Kuipers Doggersbank, a Jongert, and the 78m Schichau Unterweser ice-class explorer M/Y Lone Ranger. Time spent treating steel hull oxidation gave me a direct working knowledge of corrosion, composite resins, fibreglass, and structural fabrication.
Today the studio produces primarily in A1 (Acrylic One), a mineral-acrylic composite deployed strictly within its structural parameters and selected for its strength-to-weight ratio, durability, and low-toxicity profile. Integrated with decommissioned industrial mooring rope bound under kinetic tension, the resulting masses function as physical diagrams of vector force, altering the architectural volume and spatial flow of the exhibition container. See The Honeycomb for the architectural application.
Curriculum Vitae
Institutional Record & Field OperationsWhat follows is the institutional record — the places, the vessels, the years. It documents where the lessons were forged: the museum that trained the taxonomic gaze, the oceans that taught resilience, and the materials that survived the harshest conditions on Earth.
Cape Cache Studio (2019–Present)
Artist · Pearly Beach / Suiderstrand, Western Cape, South Africa
Established studio operations at 34°40′S 19°30′E. The studio translates more than twenty years of marine engineering discipline into permanent sculptural and architectural interventions, organised across six navigational typologies: The Frame, The Debris, The Threshold, The Gaze, Multiplicity, and The Invisible Law.
Selected Exhibitions & Placements
2027
Exhibition (forthcoming): Alliance Française, Cape Cache, Cape Town.
2026
Group: BBOS Art Gallery & Café, Baardskeerdersbos.
2025–present
Placement: Dallas Smith Gallery, Plettenberg Bay (since July 2025).
2025
Solo: Salt & Solo, self-presented inaugural exhibition, Cape Cache Gallery Rotunda, Pearly Beach.
2025
Group: Pigment of Imagination, Dallas Smith Gallery, Plettenberg Bay.
2025
Group: Maker, Stanford, Western Cape.
2025
Group: A River Runs Through It, Die Hangkas, Groeneweide Farm, Franskraal.
2024–2025
Group: Baardskeerdersbos Art Route, by invitation of Jan Vingerhoets. Recognised as Best-Selling Artist, 2024.
2024
Group: Freedom, Kamers Vol Geskenke, Blaauwklippen, Stellenbosch.
2024
Group: Aqua, Art Point Gallery, Noordhoek, Cape Town.
2024–2025
Placement: Benguela Cove Wine Estate & Art Gallery, Walker Bay.
2023
Placement: The Great White House, Gansbaai.
Maritime Career (139,500+ Nautical Miles)
2013–2018
Captain & Chief Engineer. M/Y Take 5 & M/Y Coy Koi. Commanded long-range passages (Caribbean, Bahamas) and directed multi-million-dollar engineering refits.
2006–2013
Captain & Engineer. M/Y Maharani (68ft Nordhavn). Technical operations across the ABC islands. Completed extensive dive surveys of Bonaire’s reef systems.
1996–2005
First Mate / Engineer. M/Y Lone Ranger (78m Schichau Unterweser). Transatlantic, Antarctic, and South Pacific transits.
1994–1995
First Mate & Field Operations. S/Y Amaranth, M/Y Picante, and Red Sea dive operations.
Education & Qualifications
1993
Diploma in Fine Art: Painting, Printmaking & Ceramics, Border Technikon (now Walter Sisulu University). A formative internship at the East London Museum, among preserved coelacanth specimens, taught me to read form through negative space.
Licensure
RYA Ocean Yachtmaster (Commercial Endorsement); AEC & MEOL; Advanced Firefighting; STCW 2010; ENG1.