Art Exhibitions

Looking through my old catalogues, I discovered that sculpture had been foregrounded in my exhibitions.  Apart from Wordfees in 2023, my two dimensional work has played second fiddle to the sculpture.  In Why are we here, the position is reversed.

 

Nevertheless, the 2-D work reflects the same interests as the 3-D work.  I explore the conundrum of the division between the human hubris and the animal world, that which the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, calls the “abyssal rupture”,  and which I refer to as the “space between”.  The diary pages I wrote expressed my thoughts and musings over the question of this division.

 

The diary started in 1993 at an exhibition held in the Goodman Gallery called Nicholas-October 1990.  The exhibition reflected on the murder of my nephew, aged 23 in 1990.  He worked for the then banned ANC.  He was killed by a letter bomb sent to his firm by a right-wing cabal.  I commemorated his death in 1993.  In addition to sculpture, I recorded my response to the tragedy in diary form.  A4 pages were placed in a wooden box.  The pages acted as a parallel text.  Subsequent to 1993, the pages have grown from musings in a box to the wall.  When a page is removed another takes its place.  Thus the work is forever changing.

 

From A4 size the diaries grew and grew to finally become large canvases 2x3 metres.  However, the iconographical concerns remain the same.

 

Sometime in the late 60’s, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass became a metaphor for this upside down world.   Thus Alice and her cohorts, the White Rabbit, Humpty Dumpty, and the Cheshire Cat feature prominently in the works.

Address: Thesen House, 6 Long Street, Knysna

Tel: 044 382 5107