@Bathurst St., Makhanda by christinedixie

Christine Dixie, 2022

Bathurst St., Makhanda

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYkTjk3N_2s

The shopfronts in Bathurst Street., Makhanda, a small town in the Eastern Cape, reflect the ways in which its colonial past merge with its digital present. Remnants of wooden door frames, stain glass, the presence of the Observatory which houses a panopticon like camera obscura and the pervasive name of Bathurst mix with cell-phone kiosks and fast-food signs.

Bathurst Street. is very wide, wide enough, legend has it, to turn a horse cart, which was necessary in the 1820’s when my ancestors, Emily and Philip Dixie opened a Haberdashery shop there. Bathurst Street is named after Lord Bathurst who was a politician and British Colonial Officer. In June 1812 he become Secretary of State for War and Colonies under the Earl of Liverpool until April 1827. It was to Lord Bathurst that Lord Charles Somerset wrote urging the settlement of British subjects to create a human barrier between the Cape Colony and the amaXhosa territory.

Ironically, Bathurst Street is now in the town newly named Makhanda. Makhanda also known as Nxele ("the left-handed"), was a Xhosa warrior, prophet, and advisor to Chief Ndlambe. It was Makhanda who helped instigate a failed attack against the town of (then) Grahamstown, called The Battle of Grahamstown (1819).

In the exhibition, held at the SARCHi Gallery, 33 Twickenham Avenue, Johannesburg, the central image, which is larger than the other twelve prints in the series, depicts a ‘landscape’ view of the street. Barely discernible in the distance is a glimpse of Makana’s Kop, an outcrop of trees situated in Joza township and a significant site that links it to The Battle of Grahamstown. In the centre of the image three structures bisect the image vertically. A lone palm tree, a signpost for Bathurst St., resembling a cross and a set of traffic lights. A large signpost for the N2, the national road the runs past Makhanda directs the viewer and visitor out of Makhanda.

The ‘cellphone’ image depicts another view, this time from the other end of Bathurst St., one that looks out over the township from another vantage point, and also depicts Makana’s Kop in the distance. Spanning outwards from this central image, the ten smaller prints depict shopfronts, from both sides of the street, and the viewer is invited to ‘virtually’ move down the street.

In the prints, the woodcut imitates an ‘engraving’, the style in which images of the frontier were transmitted to the European ‘centre’ in newspapers such as The Illustrated London News. It is through the frames of the cell phone, devices from the present, that a new and contemporary narrative is taking place. Framing, as a conceptual device, is central to this body of work, as the image moves outwards from the frame of the cell-phone, to the faux frame created through collage, and finally the ‘real’ frame, framing the print.

My intention is that the viewer, snapping a shot on their own phone, completes the cycle, becoming implicated in this ‘ seeing through framing’ process.