Randwick artist Wendy Lessick Bookatz brings family folklore, memory, and her father’s ducks to her latest solo exhibition, Di Zun & Katchkes (The Sun & Ducks), from 3-8 November 2026.

In 1963, in a suburban backyard in Johannesburg, Wendy Lessick Bookatz's father kept ducks. The neighbours complained, and the ducks moved out.

In Di Zun & Katchkes, Bookatz draws on childhood memories, family folklore, her Lithuanian Jewish ancestry and the people who have shaped her life. Ducks wander through imagined shtetl landscapes, fiddlers appear alongside apples and strawberries, and fragments of the past find new life on canvas.

Following her 2025 exhibition Women, Pogroms, Love, which explored violence against women and the murder of her great-aunt Sarah Chaya Krikst in a pogrom in 1918, Bookatz has turned towards a gentler exploration of family folklore, childhood memories, loss and renewal.

"The ducks were always there," she says. "More than sixty years later, they have returned in paint."

The exhibition concludes with a Finissage (closing morning tea) on Sunday, 8 November, at 11am.

Viki Nadel OAM, a Past President of NCJWA NSW and Past Co-President of NCJWA National, will formally close the exhibition, and guitarist Royce Isacowitz will perform Jewish-inspired music.

Join us in celebrating art, memory and Jewish cultural heritage.