CONCEPTUAL WORK
Trust me I’m an artist
In trying to put this concept into context and looking at the illusions we construct around ourselves it thus feels relevant to our time.
The original premise of the well-worn phrase from those 50’s adverts has an irony that appealed to me.
Un(tie)tled/En(tie)tlement
Art/Out of the Ordinary
021 Group show AVA Gallery Cape Town
The work is a comment on patriarchal power, crony capitalism, and the lack of transparency and accountability in contemporary power making structures.
As an everyday item of dress, the tie is worn unquestioningly. Historically alien on the African continent, this mode of dress may be considered a bizarre manifestation of colonial custom and material exploitation.
Visually evoking the noose, neckties carry further associations of submission and slavery.
The writing is on the wall
Resonance and Wonder Group Show
Jewish Museum Cape Town
At a time when globalisation is supposed to tear down barriers, security fears, an influx of immigrants and refugees have fuelled a new spate of wall building.
65 countries have erected walls/fences on their borders compared to 16 at the fall of the Berlin wall. Notwithstanding the complexity of the issues the essence of this aggressive form of separation is not only ineffective; it implies a form of imperialism.
A quote from The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem
“Whatever the excuse, a wall of separation remains, a restriction of freedom of movement, a rupture for families who are separated, and an injury for those who lose their land. On one or the other side, it reflects a difficulty to coexist, to live together. Various walls erected throughout the world are all objects of shame and suffering…”
Artist Francis Alys recalls, “When you find yourself standing in front of the wall in Jerusalem, no matter which side, you feel an overwhelming sensation of being defeated, of total absurdity.”
And of course, there is Wall Street, the Walls of Nkandla and many more…
Headstones 2013
Commune.1 exhibition March 2014
Not written in Stone
“A grave disservice” (Archbishop Desmond Tutu describing the actions of the MPs who voted in favour of the Secrecy Bill, 2011)
This piece comments on the debates surrounding the Information Bill; the irony of the South African see-saw cycle of suppression and thus, yet again, the death of freedom of expression and transparency. On a symbolic level, the Information Bill controversy speaks deeply to my subjective vulnerability and experience of feeling cut off from sufficient access to information, where deprivation of knowledge creates an unconscious anaesthetized middle class reality.
Oil on sandstone
Dimensions variable
Millstone – 2014
Commune.1 exhibition March 2014
Neckties can be looked at as being a symbol of submission and slavery (a chain around one’s neck). Words that come up are noose, bib, wage slave, button protector, European oppressor, neck warmer…This piece is a comment on the fact that this ‘tradition’ is unquestioningly perpetuated and particularly in Africa, feels like a bizarre and subversive propagation of a colonial tradition.
Ray-banned – 2014
Commune.1 exhibition March 2014
The use of limestone – a tribute to Mandela; is a comment on the pain and discomfort and damage that he and the other political prisoners endured on Robben Island when forced to break limestone rocks in the quarry without protective eye gear.
Sin
Commune.1 exhibition March 2014
Sin is a direct response to the work Ray-banned, using the symbolic mathematical formulas and the play on the meaning of the words…sin, right angle (apartheid government) divided by the opposite (hypotenuse).
Lot’s wife – 2014
Youngblood exhibition Nov 2014
More than a pinch of salt
Salt and glass on salt lick.
Dimensions variable
Mielie meal, matzo meal, tea leaves, ash, salt, ceramic, gel on salt licks.
Dimensions variable
Set 2015
Everard Read group show 2015
Empire
Hand cut and found granite pieces
Dimensions variable
The installation of tumbled granite pieces and seven broken ties (G7) attempts to comment on an unbending patriarchal decision making world order and what that represents in terms of lack of transparency, lack of accountability, crony capitalism and global minority rule
