South African Art 1848 - Now

SOUTH AFRICAN ART 1848 – NOW

Front cover: Pieter Hugo, Dayaba Usman with the monkey Clear, Nigeria 2005 (no 34)

SOUTH AFRICAN ART 1848 – NOW

6 December 2005 – 14 January 2006 All works are for sale Prior viewing by appointment

MICHAEL STEVENSON Hill House De Smidt St Green Point Cape Town 8005 PO Box 616 Green Point 8051 South Africa tel +27 (0)21 421 2575 fax +27 (0)21 421 2578 info@michaelstevenson.com www.michaelstevenson.com

Willem Boshoff, Vallende drie-letter woorde, detail (no 29)

1 Tsonga

Headrest with anthropomorphic features circa 1890 height: 16.25cm, length: 19cm

About two dozen headrests with zoomorphic and anthropomorphic features are illustrated in the literature on the art of south-east Africa. Yet this is the only example that simultaneously evokes the human figure and takes the form of a four-legged animal with splayed legs. Female genitalia and breasts are carved on the underside.

The figure also has a strange tail and wears a flat, circular hat. Sections of the headrest have pokerwork to provide passages with a distinct contrast to the blonde wood. The surface was varnished, probably soon after it was collected, and has crackled in places over time. The top support has broken off and been repaired, as is often the case.

The robust and bulbous aesthetic of this headrest is distinctive. The other published examples have more sinuous lines, and the only related example is illustrated in HPN Muller and JF Snelleman, Industrie des Cafres du sud-est de l’Afrique, Leyden, 1893, plate XV, no 3. The similarities between the illustrated example and this headrest are numerous, and it is a strong possibility that they were carved by the same hand.

2 Thomas Baines (1820–1875) ‘Fingo wood carrier’ 1848 pencil, pen and ink and watercolour on paper 28.3 x 22.8cm signed, inscribed and dated ‘Tangga inkuni/buy wood – Fingo wood carrier – T Baines/Fort Beaufort/ March 20 1848’

Baines arrived in Grahamstown in early March 1848, looking for opportunities to travel into the interior, and he soon joined William Liddle, of the Commissariat Department, on an expedition to the Colesberg vicinity. They left Grahamstown on 15 March 1848 and returned in June. This was Baines’ first real African journey, on horseback accompanied by Cape wagons drawn by oxen. In his journal on 20 March 1848, the date of this drawing, he described the subject of the sketch: ‘Groups of Fingo and Kafir girls in picturesque and becoming dresses, the chief articles of which were a skin wrapped about the body so as to form a kind of petticoat, fastened round the waist with a leather thong …, a cap likewise of skin, and, beside the fringe already mentioned, a strip of dark material, either cloth or leather three or four inches in width and many feet in length studded with knobbed buttons of glittering brass, hanging carelessly over the left shoulder, and bearing gracefully and easily upon their heads bundles of firewood far exceeding their own bodies in size and length, furnished me with occupation for the remainder of the day. And my proceedings, as I afterward found, were watched with much interest by the Hottentot females of the establishment, who questioned their mistress as to my object in putting people’s faces in my pocket, attaching to the operation some idea of witchcraft and taking care to keep themselves so well out of my way that I had no little difficulty in obtaining the smallest service from any of them.’ (Thomas Baines, Journal of residence in Africa 1842–1953, edited by RF Kennedy, Cape Town, 1961, I, p40)

3 Sir Frank Brangwyn (British, 1867–1956) ‘An ostrich farm, South Africa, in a blaze of sunlight, and a black woman on guard’ 1891 oil on panel 31 x 43cm signed and dated lower left ‘FB 91’

Brangwyn (RA RWS PRBA HR) visited South Africa in 1891 on a commission from a picture dealer named Larkin whose gallery in Bond Street dealt principally in oriental ceramics. Brangwyn proposed that he should travel with fellow artist William Hunt, and they were paid £500 for the work. After travelling in the Cape Peninsula they set out, mostly in horse-drawn carts, for the vineyards of Stellenbosch and Paarl, the ostrich farms and the Kimberley diamond fields. Larkin expected them to stay in South Africa for at least a year and tried to halt their return after four or five months, but he was pacified once he saw the oils they were working up in London from their sketches. For a more complete account of this journey, see Rodney Brangwyn, Brangwyn, London, 1978, pp52–57. This work is listed in Vincent Galloway, The oil and mural paintings of Sir Frank Brangwyn, RA, 1867–1956, Leigh on Sea, 1962, p56, no 505.

The collection of approximately 50 South African paintings was exhibited at Larkin’s Japanese Gallery in March 1892 to favourable reviews. The full title for this painting as listed in the catalogue of works exhibited is An ostrich farm, South Africa, in a blaze of sunlight, and a black woman on guard. Brangwyn’s reference to the light in the title is noteworthy because he was perhaps the first artist to paint in South Africa who was not intimidated by the harsh African midday sun. Even a century later, artists such as David Goldblatt continue to grapple with conveying the desaturated palette of this distinctive landscape and light.

4 Gregoire Boonzaier (1909–2005) Malay Quarter, Cape Town 1934 two paintings: oil on canvas 41 x 51cm each signed and dated lower left and lower right respectively ‘Gregoire 1934’

Boonzaier died in April this year aged 95. Throughout his life he trod an interesting path between the political left and Afrikaner nationalism. Although the latter supported him by avidly collecting his work and conferring honours by way of its institutions, Boonzaier had a long history of supporting the Communist Party and assisting the oppressed. He joined the Communist Party in 1938 on his return from Europe, and attended party meetings into the 1950s. His dealer in the 1980s recalls how Boonzaier generously supported the families of political leaders imprisoned on Robben Island on their visits to Cape Town, and how, after one exhibition, Boonzaier asked him to send the entire proceeds of the sales to a ‘coloured’ bursary fund. Boonzaier’s lifelong preoccupation with District Six, a traumatic landscape in apartheid history, is another illustration of the complex paradoxes that characterise his life and deserve further exploration.

These two oils, dated 1934, were painted just before Boonzaier left for Britain in February 1935, at the age of 25, to study art and to travel. Despite his youth, his work had already attracted very positive reviews for almost a decade. These paintings were most likely included in one of the exhibitions he held in the year prior to his departure, and reviews of the exhibition at the Derry Gallery in Cape Town in early February 1935 refer to a number of views of Cape Town. Edward Roworth wrote in the Cape Times that in these pictures ‘he is feeling his way towards a simpler method, more brilliant colour, and a more subtle sense of design’ (8.2.1935), and a reviewer in the Cape Argus noted that his ‘landscapes are painted with a real poetic feeling which makes them unusually sensitive’, and prophetically concluded his review: ‘He is going to the original fountain, and he should return to South Africa like a giant refreshed’ (11.2.1935).

5 Rupert Shephard (1909–1992) Harvesting grapes 1955 oil on board 48.3 x 88.3cm signed and dated lower left ‘Rupert Shephard 1955’

This stylised scene of harvesting in the vineyards at the Cape was painted in 1955, the same year that Shephard painted a similar pair of works, Vintage I and II, for the National Vintage Festival held in Paarl in February (see M Stevenson and D Viljoen, South African paintings 1880–1990, August 2000, no 9). In June that year he held a solo show at the Association of Arts Gallery, Cape Town, and it is surprising that this work is not mentioned in the reviews of either exhibition. Shephard structured the composition of these paintings around a decorative frontal plane – in this instance, asserted with a curling tendril of a vine, the blooms of blue morning glory and the edge of an arum lily. These elements, in addition to the play between the strong horizontality of the landscape and the vertical elements, including the workers with baskets on their heads and cypress trees in the distance, illustrate Shephard’s deep understanding of pictorial space.

Shephard’s contribution to South African art has never been fully acknowledged. He transformed the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town from a conservative and provincial institution, suffering from Professor Edward Roworth’s dogmatic directorship, into a liberal and outward-looking art school following his appointment as Professor of Fine Art in 1948 (see Bruce Arnott’s obituary of Shephard in the Cape Times, 30 April 1992). In his years at the Cape, Shephard sought to integrate his British training at the Slade School of Art in London with his interpretation of the people and motifs of South Africa. As Deane Anderson wrote in an article in The Studio (July 1956), Africa seized his imagination and ‘his cultural roots’ were ‘transplanted into a new soil and … derived a new energy of expression which has both enriched his own vision and the art of his adopted country’. Shephard’s graphic work reflecting his 15 years at the Cape was the subject of two books: Cape scapes (1954) and Passing scene: eighteen images of southern Africa (1966). He returned to Britain in 1963 and died there in 1992 aged 83.

6 Christo Coetzee (1929–2000) Still life with urn and sprouting potato 1954 oil on canvas 45.5 x 60.5cm signed and dated top right ‘54 Christo Coetzee’

This work was exhibited on Coetzee’s seminal exhibition at the Hanover Gallery in London in 1955. After studying at Wits University, he spent a year in London in 1951 on a postgraduate scholarship, then returned briefly to Johannesburg. The drudgery of clerical positions compelled Coetzee to return to London at the end of 1953, when he met the famous photographer and stylist Anthony Denney who started collecting his work and introduced him to the Hanover Gallery. The exhibition, opened by Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, comprised 51 still lifes and portraits. The critic Oswell Blakestone wrote, ‘if you are weary of austerity, treat yourself to Christo Coetzee.

Paints are used like jewels and the still lifes have a richness that makes us forget the hour. Here is the atmosphere of a magic palace and the girls’ heads with crowns of flowers are passport photographs for poetry.’

The imagery of the still lifes of this period is lyrical and romantic yet often strange; Grecian vases, urns, fish and crustaceans, eggs, fruit, birdcages and boxes are grouped together in unlikely combinations. The forms and textures of the objects are echoed in the passages of impasto as well as incisions and scrapings into the wet paint which heighten their tactile and at times surreal qualities. Coetzee continued painting still lifes throughout his life but the taut primordial and skeletal sensibility of the early works sets them distinctly apart from the later, more tranquil compositions.

See M Stevenson and D Viljoen, Christo Coetzee: paintings from London and Paris 1954–1964, Cape Town, 2001, pp10–19.

7 Albert Adams (1930–) ‘South Africa’ 1959 oil on board, triptych each panel 183 x 122cm, overall 183 x 366cm

This triptych, painted in 1959 prior to Adams’ leaving South Africa for voluntary exile in 1960, was compared to Picasso’s iconic Guernica when it was first exhibited in 1959, and subsequently became known as the African Guernica. Picasso’s work was painted in reaction to the brutal atrocities perpetrated on behalf of the fascist Generalissimo Francisco Franco against the civilian population of the little Basque village of Guernica in northern Spain on 27 April 1937. The town was chosen for bombing practice by Hitler’s air force, and was pounded for over three hours; it burnt for three days and 1 600 people were killed or wounded. Picasso chose to paint a monochromic piece with abstracted figuration after seeing stark black and white photographs of the atrocities in the Paris newspapers. His work was first exhibited as the centrepiece for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World Fair in Paris and was housed by the Museum of Modern Art in New York until 1981 when, on the centenary of Picasso’s birth, 25 October 1981, it was returned to Spain as testimony of national reconciliation. It is now on display at the Reina Sofía in Madrid.

Adams’ South Africa is visionary in its conception and imagery. The work anticipates the apocalypse of apartheid that would traumatise the country for another 35 years.

It is timeous, now that South Africa has achieved freedom and democracy, that it is publicly exhibited again.

Adams is yet another example of a talented black South African artist whose work fell between the cracks of apartheid and now deserves to be reconsidered and reclaimed.

He was born in Johannesburg and started his artistic training in Woodstock, Cape Town, in 1947. Due to the constraints of ‘separate development’ he eventually gave up his career as an art teacher and left for Britain in 1953 to further his education at the Slade in London, where he won a scholarship. He also attended a four-week master class given by Oskar Kokoschka in Salzburg. Adams returned to Cape Town for his first one-man exhibition at the Modern Homes Gallery in October 1959, then went back to London a year later. In 1960 he sent out some recent work which was exhibited in the small gallery at the South African Association of Arts in November. The only subsequent exposure of his work to local audiences took place at a small exhibition held at the South African National Gallery in December 2002.

8 Gerard Sekoto (1913–1993) Policeman on a white horse in the fields

Although this painting dates from 1959 when Sekoto was living in exile in Paris, it recalls his years in South Africa. In his letters he writes about policemen patrolling the townships on horseback and recalls a particular incident involving a young boy:

1959 oil on canvas 50 x 64cm signed and dated lower right ‘G Sekoto 59’

In the fields, summer is the time for hoeing when people have to cut weeds that interfere with the growth of the young maize. It is customary to use community gatherings for helping one another ... These gatherings could be either for young people only, in other cases for women only, or women and men together, in which case the host prepared meals for the people invited, with also beer made of maize for the men. The brewing of this beer used to be illicit.

During this period there would be one or more policemen, each one taking his own direction on a white horse – a very handsome sight to look at. He travels the different farms with the knowledge that it is at harvest time that people often gather and certainly he will catch his prey somewhere. He could see for a very long distance and whenever he distinguished a group, he galloped his horse towards them. If the beer had quickly been hidden, he would demand to know the host and go with him to his home to find some proof of his illicit brewing which would then be carried in a little tin. The policeman handcuffed the man who had, at the same time, to carry the little tin in his elbow while the two hands were carrying the overcoat of the policeman on his horse – which had been trained to cut with its front hoofs the heels of the Ndebele man trotting in front.

The policeman looked very triumphant with his handsome-looking horse dancing about eight miles, or to Middelburg eighteen miles away. I witnessed a few cases of these outrageous events as, at that time, it was a pride or fashion for the police driving their victims in that way. But most unhappily for me it has left the stain of the bleeding heels of the black man, trotting along, handcuffed, before such a brilliantlytrained horse with the white policeman clothed either in black uniform or khaki.

Such brutalities began to lay a stress upon my vague thoughts of the past; but now I was experiencing my father’s fury after the farmer had given a flogging to a young Mandebele boy, the farmer’s boys with dogs and their strong dislike of us, the many white people who would beat black people mostly just for the love of it. Now these heart-breaking and exaggerated acts of hatred upon human beings was further exposed by these evil-minded policemen on horseback. All that being stressed by the repeated warnings of my father, never to let anyone (black or white) address you as ‘kaffir’, but to respect people of all colours and customs. (Barbara Lindop, Gerard Sekoto, Johannesburg, 1988, pp9–11)

9 Ezrom Legae (1937–1999) ‘Kgosi’ circa 1970

Although Legae was born and grew up in Soweto, his name and the title of this work suggest his descent from a Sotho-speaking family. Kgosi is a Sotho word, meaning chief or king, and this abstracted elongated form, with its long thin nose and pronounced lips, is probably the portrayal of a regal figure in traditional mythology

bronze, edition 1/10 height: 56cm (including base) engraved on the lower back of the sculpture ‘EL I/X’; small plaque on back of base engraved ‘Thin Head

by Ezrom Legae Zulu Sculptor. To mark the association of Lindsay Smithers South Africa with Pembertons London March 1970’

The stylistic attributes of Legae’s works from the 1960s and early 1970s (see also no 10, Head of a wise man) recall the distillation of form that characterises many West and central African masks and figures, yet, as Rankin noted: although he acknowledges that all aspects of an artist’s experience contribute to the conceptualisation of form, Legae states that he was not consciously influenced by African sculpture, seen either in [Egon] Guenther’s collection or while travelling in central and southern Africa in 1963. On the contrary, he feels a lack of affinity with carving, believing that the nature of wood tends to dictate form, while modelling gives much freer rein to the artist’s imagination. (Elizabeth Rankin, Images of metal, Johannesburg, 1994, p136) Legae studied under Cecil Skotnes and Sydney Kumalo at the Polly Street and Jubilee Art Centres from 1959 to 1964. He received early recognition for his work: he held his first solo exhibition at Egon Guenther Gallery in Johannesburg in 1966, and he won the sculpture award in the 1967 Art South Africa Today exhibition.

Guenther sold four casts of Kgosi, of which this work is marked I/X, and, prior to Legae’s death, the Goodman Gallery sold another four casts. The date (1970) on the plaque indicates that this work was conceived and cast earlier than the estate records suggest.

Also see D Katz, ‘Ezrom Legae: a man of two worlds’, Lantern, 1974, 24 (1), pp55–63.

10 Ezrom Legae (1937–1999) ‘Head of a wise man’ 1969 bronze, edition 2/5 height: 36cm

Like Kgosi (no 9), Legae’s Head of a wise man is an abstracted depiction of a human head. Below the deep-set eyes are two vertical ridges and the nose is alluded to by the negative space in between these raised sections.

This bronze is 2 of an edition of 5 and was cast in 1969 by Egon Guenther. The whereabouts of 1/5 is unknown; the Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Bloemfontein, acquired 3/5 in 1989; 4/5 is in a private collection, and 5/5 was never cast. The provenance of this cast is the Pelmama collection (Register MAMS ELEG 69/01), and this specific cast was exhibited in The neglected tradition: towards a new history of South African art 1930–1988, Johannesburg Art Gallery, 1988, no 41. It is also illustrated in Lantern, 38, August 1989, p50.

11 Cecil Skotnes (1926–) ‘No 2 Totem’ coloured incised wood 210.8 x 59.7cm inscribed with title on reverse

Skotnes often carved tall, thin panels which recall the format of the totem poles of the first nations of north-west America. Although his treatment of the medium and his imagery are imbued with references to African art, the figure is perhaps that of an ancestor or guardian that resonates within our universal consciousness. In this panel, the Janus heads have mask-like faces, one seen from the front, one in profile; the expression is of an altered or other state. The elongated body is entwined by prickly yet lyrical lines crisscrossing the torso and limbs, allusions perhaps to the paths of energy and connection that weave in and out of our bodies. This totem panel with its enigmatic and sacred imagery stands as an object of veneration in our secular times.

This work was probably included in Skotnes’ solo show at the Grosvenor Gallery, London, in 1965 or the Kumalo Skotnes joint exhibition at the same gallery in July/ August 1966.

Skotnes’ life and art are closely interconnected with the history of post-war South African art. He was part of the so-called Wits and Amadlozi groups of artists and, through his work at the Polly Street Art Centre in Johannesburg from 1952 to 1966, nurtured a generation of pioneering black artists. His work has been highly acclaimed since the mid-1950s, and was included in the São Paulo biennials of 1957, 1959, 1961 and 1967, and the Venice Biennales of 1958, 1964, 1966 and 1968.

12 Sydney Kumalo (1935–1988) Dancing woman bronze, edition 3/5 height: 72cm

Kumalo was deeply interested in the traditions of African sculpture as well as the history of European sculpture, and both of these aesthetic lineages are evident in this bronze. The dancing figure stands contrapose, a poise integral to Western sculpture but rarely seen in African sculpture where a figure would usually be read as symmetrical in the frontal plane. The contrasting treatment of the abstracted right leg and defined breast, and the more naturalistic left leg and abstracted arm, reflects Kumalo’s own grappling with the dynamic interchange between representational and abstracted treatment of form in African and Western sculpture. The rhythm and movement of the dancing figure are accentuated by the pronounced sloping shoulder and different forms of the legs, while the face, tilted upwards, is transfixed, perhaps by distant music. Even though this sculpture is unusually large for Kumalo, it nevertheless has a monumentality that belies its height of 72cm, for reasons perhaps related to his observation, ‘The African people are a heavy people and I’ve always admired this heaviness’ (quoted in Elizabeth Rankin, Images of metal, Johannesburg, 1994, p130).

For a related work entitled Upright figure, circa 1974, see De Jager, p108.

Kumalo was born and grew up in Johannesburg. He studied under Cecil Skotnes at the Polly Street Art Centre from 1953, and with sculptor Edoardo Villa in 1958–59.

He was employed as a teacher at Polly Street (and then the Jubilee Social Centre) in 1960, serving as an important influence on a generation of younger sculptors. His first solo exhibition took place in Johannesburg in 1962, and the following two years saw him exhibiting as part of the Amadlozi Group, founded by Egon Guenther, alongside Skotnes, Villa, Legae and others. He was able to devote himself to art full-time from 1964. See Lola Watter, ‘Sydney Kumalo’, Our art III, Pretoria, 1978, pp66–73.

13 Gerard Sekoto (1913–1993) Dancing Senegalese figures 1967

In 1966 Sekoto was invited to Senegal for the First International Festival of Negro Art, and he stayed on for a year, painting the people and the landscape. He visited Casamance, a region where the traditional way of life remained relatively unaffected by colonialism, and was particularly moved by a ceremony he witnessed:

oil on canvas 50 x 65cm signed and dated bottom right ‘G Sekoto 67’

There happened to have been a gathering over the death of a young man bitten by a snake. There was then the killing of a cow and a bull together with a few chickens during the dance of the women. The whole ceremony lasted a day and a great part of the night. All gestures and structures in [the] build of these people are much different from our women in South Africa. (Quoted in Barbara Lindop, Gerard Sekoto, Johannesburg, 1988, pp228–9) This oil, painted either in Senegal or soon after his return to Paris, reflects the energy and rhythm of the dancers who mesmerised him on this occasion.

14 Gerard Sekoto (1913–1993) Paris street scene oil on canvas 54 x 16cm signed bottom right ‘G Sekoto’

After leaving South Africa in 1947, Sekoto struggled until the beginning of the 1960s to sustain his career as an artist. It was at this time, as N Chabani Manganyi writes in his biography of Sekoto, that ‘he was firmly settled and ready to move forward in his art and life’ (A black man called Sekoto, Johannesburg, 1996, p125). The shift is evident in this view of a street scene in Paris which stands in contrast to the nostalgic scenes and portraits of township and rural life in South Africa that he mostly painted in these years. The unusual elongated vertical format of the painting, and the towering, tilting buildings, accentuate a sense of claustrophobia which may suggest that, even after all his years in Paris, Sekoto was still overwhelmed by the cityscape. This is a lonely view of the city; the only people to be seen are indistinguishable from the vehicles, the midnight-blue sky presses down on swaying buildings, and the cool hues of his palette intimate alienation experienced by an exile in a distant foreign land.

15 Ephraim Ngatane (1938–1971) The latest news 1970 oil on board 77 x 64.5cm signed and dated lower right ‘E Ngatane ’70’

Ngatane was born in Lesotho in 1938 but lived in Johannesburg for most of his life, until his death in March 1971 aged 33. His experience of the shantytowns and townships of the Witwatersrand formed the focus of his work, and he was regarded as one of the first so-called township artists who sought to depict the daily life of the urban black working class. In this instance, two men are seated, one reading a newspaper; it is a domestic scene which stands in contrast to the social and political struggle that dominated life in the townships.

Ngatane’s mastery of paint is immediately apparent in this work. He has thickly applied, with a palette knife, blocks of flat colour in hues of greens and blues, accented with white and orange, to create a surface that vibrates with contrasts and textures.

The work is bold in concept and execution, and inevitably raises the question of how his art would have developed had he not died at such a young age.

16 Joan Wright (1911–1991) ‘Six men’ 1970 oil on board 95 x 95cm signed and dated lower right ‘Joan Wright 70’ and inscribed with title on reverse

Wright, the daughter of Dorothy Kay, studied at the Port Elizabeth Technikon Art School and in London, before living in Johannesburg and Nyasaland with her husband. In 1939, after being widowed, she returned to Port Elizabeth where she remained until her death. She is best known as an educator: she joined the staff of the Port Elizabeth Technikon in 1941 and taught there for the next 30 years until her retirement in 1972. Wright exhibited infrequently and sold her paintings reluctantly, which would account for the lack of acknowledgement of her work aside from a tribute exhibition at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Museum of Art in Port Elizabeth in December 1991.

A formative influence on Wright’s painting was that of her mother but, as is evident here, she extended the austere aesthetic of Kay’s late work. Wright was even more oblique in her view of the world, and her imagery often consisted of decaying cityscapes and abstracted scenes of corners of life that we tend to overlook. The inspiration for this painting is a case in point: at the Port Elizabeth Arts and Crafts shop, where she regularly bought her paints, her eye was caught by the subtle differences in jackets, the one belonging to the boss hanging beside those worn by the assistants.

17 Irma Stern (1894–1966) Scenes on the French Riviera 1965 14 drawings: mixed media on paper 35 x 25cm (9), 42.5 x 30cm (3), 29 x 42cm (1), 24 x 35cm (1) signed and dated 1965

Stern sketched throughout her life, and on her travels she rapidly drew the people and scenes that she encountered. This unusually large set of 14 sketches dates from the year before her death in 1966. The sketches are spontaneous impressions of daily life on the French Riviera, and she has used whatever medium was at hand – wax crayon, ink and koki – to produce works that are loosely structured and calligraphic in spirit.

In the 1950s and 1960s Stern repeatedly returned to the Mediterranean, in particular France and Spain, and in 1965 she spent a period painting on French Riviera. In an interview about her work there she remarked: ‘I got myself deeply involved in the atmosphere and landscape of the south of France where the colours are fantastic.

There the blues are transparent and look as though they are part of a vision’ (Sunday Express, 10.9.1965).

This series originally came from the estate of the artist.

18 / 19 / 20 Walter Battiss (1906–1982) ‘Le Déjeuner’ oil on canvas 39.5 x 49.5cm signed bottom left ‘Battiss’ and inscribed with title on reverse

Girls on a sea shore oil on canvas 36 x 51cm signed top right ‘Battiss’

‘Girl turning into a woman’ circa 1980 oil on canvas 29.5 x 40cm signed bottom left ‘Battiss’ and inscribed with title on side of stretcher

Battiss is a seminal artist in the conception of modern and contemporary art in South Africa. He was a pivotal provocateur and advocate of both international modern art and African art in South Africa and, as an artist, he pursued a very personal path to produce work that is not a local derivation of any Western ‘isms’. Like many contemporary artists of our time, he followed his imagination to produce paintings, watercolours, prints and performances that were invariably subversive, delightful and engaging. The current (overdue) retrospective at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg reminds us that he was South Africa’s first contemporary artist in the current usage of the word.

As Battiss grew older so his work grew bolder, and the oils from his last years are painted in fluid and broad brushstrokes. His portrayal of people was often underscored by elements of eroticism, as can be seen in each of these works. In Girl turning into a woman he has calligraphically sketched the breasts and genitalia of the women against flat planes of colour reflecting the austerity of the Karoo landscape. In Girls on a seashore the naked girls frolic on the sandy strip, and in Le Déjeuner Battiss has transferred Edouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, painted in 1863, from a picnic in a forest on the edge of a pond to an idyllic island setting, and also undressed the seated male figure.

21 Stanley Pinker (1924–) ‘Gone but not forgotten’ circa 1976 oil on canvas 64 x 140cm signed below ‘SJ Pinker’

Pinker uses the somewhat Victorian turn-of-phrase Gone but not forgotten as the title for a landscape with three scarecrows, covered with old fertiliser bags, standing in a patchwork of fields, centred around a prickly pear bush. The imagery was probably inspired by the wheat fields extending over the plains of the Swartland and the undulating hills of the Overberg in the south-western Cape (note the ears of corn in the bottom right corner). On Pinker’s return to South Africa in the mid-1960s, it was the landscape that overwhelmed and inspired him: I travelled into the country, repeatedly to the Langkloof, and I was bowled over by the South African landscape. I had never previously owned a car and on my first trip from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth, when I experienced the landscape for the first time, I thought ‘My God, everything I want is here’. For a while after returning, my painting revolved almost entirely around landscape which was a new genre for me.

But I soon found myself including figures in the landscapes as I increasingly became aware of the complexities of this society. I started to think that it wasn’t enough to paint an idealised specific landscape – the introduction of figures made the situation broader, less specific of place and more specific of content. (Quoted in Michael Stevenson, Stanley Pinker, Cape Town, 2004, p17) As is often the case with Pinker, he has chosen an aerial perspective with a high horizon, and a rain cloud looms in the narrow strip of sky. A related work, Wind over grass, is in the collection of the South African National Gallery; the two works were exhibited together on Pinker’s solo show at Gallery International in Cape Town in 1976. Wind over grass is reproduced in M Stevenson, Stanley Pinker, p58.

22 Peter Clarke (1929–) ‘Landscape’ 1964 oil on board 27.5 x 23cm signed and dated lower right ‘Clarke 24.9.1964’ and inscribed with title on reverse

The artist recalls: In the 1950s I paid annual three to four-month visits to the village of Tesselaarsdal in the Caledon district of the Western Cape. During my visits I did a lot of walking, often with shepherd friends and their flocks or else on my own. I became familiar with the area. This landscape is imaginary. However, it captures the essence of the countryside, the coloured patchwork of fields late in the year, the distant grazing cattle below the hills, the silent play of wind-tossed clouds.

In December 2004 Clarke’s first solo exhibition since his retrospective at the Natale Labia Museum in 1992 was held at Michael Stevenson. The exhibition – on the occasion of his 75th birthday – comprised his past decade’s work: a series of 100 Fanscapes in which he combined paint, collage, poetry and prose.

23 Stanley Pinker (1924–) ‘Sun and moon flower’ oil on board 31 x 54.5cm signed top right ‘Stanley Pinker’, and signed and inscribed with title on label on reverse

For Pinker, humour was an integral part of the conceptualisation of his painting. In Sun and moon flower, he plays with words, form and colour by juxtaposing an orange disclike sun not with a glowing full moon, as might be expected, but rather with a view of a moonflower, which only blooms at night, seen from below.

24 Hylton Nel (1941–) ‘1953 Somer’ 2005 set of eight glazed ceramic plates

Nel’s idiosyncratic motifs are inspired by what he reads, sees and notices in the routine of his daily life. This set of eight plates evolved from a series of letters dating from the 1950s that he came across in the attic of his house in Calitzdorp. His belief in an instinctive and playful aesthetic sensibility is illustrated by his recollections of the spontaneity of childhood games, which are in sharp contrast to the self-conscious stance of art schools:

diameter: 25.5cm each One of the secret children’s games that I used to play on the farm – there was a spring that flowed into a pond where there were geese, and the geese used to hatch there and then you’d find bits of eggshell, and goose eggs have very nice white eggshells. I used to take a little box of watercolour paints and paint on these bits of eggshell and then arrange them in little places – I had different places – and then I’d say ‘these ones have got those and those and those pictures, and those have got those’ – and it used to be just a game. And so art school, with its formal aspects, was an interruption of that, in a sense – I was learning valuable new stuff, but the whole thing … was sort of difficult, whereas doing that with the eggshells was just pure pleasure. And then I went to art school in Belgium after Grahamstown, and worked for a bit, and it took about ten years to free myself from those formal constraints and to get back to myself, as it were. (Quoted in Michael Stevenson, Hylton Nel, Cape Town, 2003) A group of Nel’s works is currently included on the exhibition Table manners: form and function in contemporary international ceramics, curated by Emmanuel Cooper at the Crafts Council Gallery, London. New work will be exhibited at Michael Stevenson in January/February 2006.

25 / 26 / 27 Guy Tillim (1962–) ‘Washday, traditional Bushman dwelling, New Xade’ ‘Homestead, New Xade’ ‘A carcass of a cow for sale in New Xade, from the cattle allocated to Bushmen by the government on arrival in the new settlement’ 2005 archival pigment ink digitally printed on 300g cotton rag paper 42 x 59.4cm each each in an edition of 5 + 2 AP

The Bushmen have attracted the constant attention of scientists, ethnographers and photographers since the latter part of the 19th century, and are the object of ongoing Western projections as the living archetype of humanity. The decision of the Botswana government to move Baswara people from the Central Kgalagadi Game Reserve to a settlement known as New Xade has attracted criticism, including allegations of racism, from advocacy groups seeking to protect the Bushmen’s right to maintain their traditional way of life. However, the realities of the situation are complex. Tillim recently started photographing the people who have been relocated, approaching this fraught landscape with his customary detached yet political stance. In his images he reflects on the ambiguities of the debates and considers the relative positions of the Baswara, the authorities and the rights groups caught up in this clash between history and modernity.

Tillim was the recipient of the 2004 DaimlerChrysler Award for South African Photography. As part of the award, his Jo’burg series was exhibited at the South African National Gallery, the Durban Art Gallery and the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2004/5. The series was also exhibited at PhotoEspaña in Madrid in June 2005; at the Rencontres festival in Arles in July 2005 where he was presented with the Leica Oskar Barnack Award; and at the Bamako photography festival in Mali in November 2005.

A concertina-like book of this series has recently been published (Filigranes Éditions, Paris, and STE, Johannesburg). A large group of the Jo’burg photographs will be shown on Snap judgements: new positions in contemporary African photography at the International Center of Photography in New York from 10 March – 28 May 2006.

28 Deborah Poynton (1970–) ‘The Keeper’ 2005 oil on canvas 190 x 150cm signed and dated on reverse

Poynton’s paintings explore the disjunctions between our inner worlds and outer realities. She chooses to depict circumstances that we immediately recognise, yet which, on closer examination, are invariably not quite as we expect. Such illusions leave the viewer awkward and uncertain whether the world is really as it seems.

Throughout her work, the vulnerability and loneliness of everyday life, and the isolation of the individual in our noisy and crowded contemporary world, are immediately apparent.

The titles of four new works to be exhibited on Poynton’s third solo exhibition at Michael Stevenson (18 January – 18 February 2006) illustrate these concerns: Safety and Security, For Ever and Ever, Betrayal and Surrender. The Keeper – a related work – is described in the foreword to the catalogue for this exhibition, written by Professor Dr Peter Rech of the University of Cologne: The Keeper, although an entirely different format, takes up again the constituent elements of Betrayal. The man who occupies this frame is the same as the one represented in the right hand panel of the latter image. The man stands – entirely naked and entirely physical – and reflects on his own doubtfulness. Protected by a walled cage, he and the chair to the left are, in the end, the same. Both subjects equally show signs of aging. Both subjects seem to be fantasising on the futility of projected desires, in their impossibility of fulfillment. ‘Whatever I have been managing in my life, has slipped through my fingers,’ the keeper could be thinking to himself. ‘Have I stayed true to myself in my life?’ … On the floor lie the remains of a past: car keys, an empty Coke bottle, a folding ruler, a medicine packet, a pair of glasses, a roll of masking tape, the wallet, a plant slip, the suit jacket … The letting go of the life represented here would have salvaged a last chance, which is why the man is assuming the pose of a thinker, captured against a dark night sky. The greatest misunderstanding of all is that no longing will be fulfilled, unless one’s entire existence is given to it.

29 / 30 Willem Boshoff (1951–) ‘Vallende drie-letter woorde’ 2004 sand, metal, wood, glue

Boshoff has been entwining the verbal with the visual throughout his art of the last 30 years. Initially he worked only with Afrikaans, his mother tongue, a language that has a fraught and complex role in South African history. However, in the 1980s, he increasingly worked with English as well as African and foreign languages, and created artworks that incorporated dictionaries, alphabets and books around arcane and commonplace words and associations.

122 x 200cm

‘Vallende twee-letter woorde’ 2004 sand, metal, wood, glue 122 x 144cm

In these two recent works, Boshoff has scattered two and three-letter Afrikaans words across a sandy textured surface. They lie waiting for a wave to wash over them and sweep them away, perhaps a reflection on the changing status of Afrikaans as it adjusts to being one of 11 official languages, in contrast to the years of apartheid when it was intimately associated with the power of state. Boshoff writes: The Afrikaans language, once called Cape Dutch, is the West Germanic language of South Africa. It was developed from 17th-century Netherlandic (Dutch) by the descendants of the Dutch, German and French colonists (my forebears) who settled in southern Africa before the British occupation in 1806. Although Afrikaans is very similar to Netherlandic, it is clearly a separate language, differing from Standard Netherlands in its sound system and its loss of case and gender distinctions.

My mother taught me Afrikaans – I love it and I am proud of it. I believe that if I am allowed to speak to others whose mother tongue is also Afrikaans, I can be as spellbinding, coherent, authoritative, poetic and charming as speakers in the world’s largest languages. At school I was taught that Afrikaans is the world’s youngest modern language and that it had ‘overcome’ many of the grammatical ‘problems’ of established European languages. Black languages were considered ‘backward’ and I wasn’t taught any and didn’t learn any.

I lived through the bad years of apartheid and I saw my Afrikaans language beaten into a pulp many times. Everyone I know from my youth – and I only really knew Afrikaners – believed Afrikaans would burgeon as one of the great languages with its own literature, grammar and place. But, Afrikaans became the language of the oppressor – of the Afrikaner apartheid opportunist – and as such it became punchdrunk before it even made its mark on the world scene. The mark it made is that of an undesirable cutthroat, the world’s youngest linguistic bully. I am really dismayed at this distinction and as a result I am gradually drawn to speak and write in the language of my former enemy – English.

In the two artworks Vallende twee-letter woorde (Fallen two-letter words) and Vallende drie-letter woorde (Fallen three-letter words) I bring paradoxical homage to a language that is wrecked. The simplest Afrikaans words, consisting of two and three letters, have had their wings melted and, like Icarus, are plummeting from the sky to become part of the seepage and slippage of the oceans – fallen, broken and washed-up.

I am an artist and I know the value of things discarded, of arte povera and of abject hopelessness. I believe against belief that Afrikaans in its present state, as the flotsam and jetsam of a politico-cultural disaster, stands a better chance to be ‘liberated’ as one of the world’s great languages – better than when it was selfassertive and mean.

For a reflective, insightful and often humorous overview of Boshoff’s work, see the recent monograph by Ivan Vladislavic, Willem Boshoff, Johannesburg, 2005. See also the artist’s website www.willemboshoff.com.

31 / 32 / 33 David Goldblatt (1930–) ‘Monument to the Republic of South Africa 31 May 1961, Cornelia, Free State. 24 August 2005’ ‘Memorial to two members of the South African armed forces killed in what President PW Botha called the “Total Onslaught”, Villiers, Free State. 24 August 2005’ ‘Memorials to two policemen shot and killed here by robbers on 3 July 2002, Whipp Street, Memel, Free State. Three men were each given two life sentences for the murders. 24 August 2005’ archival pigment ink digitally printed on 300g cotton rag paper 112 x 138cm, 112 x 138cm and 89.5 x 112cm respectively each in an edition of 10

Goldblatt exhibited his new colour photographs, part of his ongoing exploration of the intersections between people, values and land in post-apartheid South Africa, at Michael Stevenson in October 2003 and February 2005. An overview of his colour work was recently shown at the Museum Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf, Germany, coinciding with the publication of his latest book, Intersections (Prestel, 2005).

These photographs were taken on subsequent journeys across the Highveld. They are an extension of his black and white series South Africa: the structure of things then (published by Oxford University Press, 1998) which focused on the values, fears, hopes and yearnings, mostly related to baasskap and apartheid, evident in structures of many kinds. These three images ache with a sense of waste: a monument to the founding of the Republic in 1961 now standing forlorn in a field of long grass waving lyrically in the wind; a graveyard, punctuated with cypress trees, containing a Heroes’ Acre of the graves of young white conscripts killed while serving in the South African Defence Force, forgotten and decaying two decades later; and memorials to two policemen, one black and one white, gunned down recently within sight of a police station with fluttering flags. These memorials are made more poignant by the dry winter veld that encompasses them. Sadness lingers for the loss of lives and the consequences of misguided political ideals.

34 Pieter Hugo (1976–) ‘Dayaba Usman with the monkey Clear, Nigeria 2005’ archival pigment ink digitally printed on 300g cotton rag paper 112 x 110cm: edition of 5 + 1 AP 63 x 61cm: edition of 8 + 1 AP

This boy and monkey are part of a troupe who, according to journalist Adetokunbo Abiola, travel around northern Nigeria – accompanied by three hyenas, two rock pythons and four monkeys – working as entertainers and selling the fetishes and herbal medicines that are in demand in Nigeria. However, the troupe has also been accused of using the animals to threaten or intimidate unwary members of the public who are forced to pay them with money or possessions. In an article in This Day (Lagos), 17 June 2004, entitled ‘Hyena, Monkey Robbery Gang Arrested’, it was reported that they ‘used a hyena and a monkey to rob their victims’ which resulted in a shootout with police. The troupe claim innocence; it was because they refused to stop at a police checkpoint that the police opened fire on them.

Hugo travelled with the troupe for 10 days in March 2005 and photographed them as part of an ongoing study of moments charged with machismo. In these often theatrical images, the pageantry of masculinity comes to the fore. The full series, including portraits of taxi washers in Durban and (male and female) judges in Botswana, will be exhibited at Michael Stevenson in February/March 2006.

Hugo has been included in the exhibition ReGeneration: 50 photographers of tomorrow, 2005–2025 at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland. The exhibition, celebrating this photography museum’s 20th anniversary, looks ahead to predict which photographers will rise to prominence during the next two decades. The accompanying catalogue is published by Thames & Hudson (London and Paris) and Aperture (New York). Hugo has also been selected as one of the New Photographers 2006, curated by Getty Images in conjunction with Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival 2005.

35 / 36 Mustafa Maluka (1976–) ‘The great quiet’ 2005 oil on canvas 180 x 300cm signed, dated and inscribed with title on reverse

‘Passageways into worlds beyond my grasp’ 2005 oil on canvas

Maluka studied graphic design at the Cape Technikon and held two solo exhibitions in Cape Town in the mid-1990s prior to a six-year sojourn at the postgraduate institution De Ateliers in Amsterdam. He returned to South Africa in May 2004, and held his first South African solo show in many years at Michael Stevenson in June 2005. In July 2005 he attended a residency at Art Omi in New York. His recent work is included in two group exhibitions in New York: d’Afrique, d’Asie at Ethan Cohen Fine Art in TriBeCa, which opened in November 2005, and Chimaera at the Tenri Cultural Institute, opening February 2006. His next solo exhibition at Michael Stevenson is scheduled for mid-2007.

For his recent solo exhibition, Maluka interspersed head-and-shoulders portraits of people he describes as ‘invented heroes’ with abstract canvases drawing strongly on the hip-hop and graffiti aesthetic. He scours magazines and other popular media for images of faces which resonate with him in some way, using them as a point of departure for his portraits. The title of the exhibition, Accented Living (a rough guide), situated these individuals in our globalised world in which displacement and relocation are commonplace. Only once a person is away from his or her own community and region does his or her accent tend to be noticed. Maluka explores ideas surrounding ‘accented living’ and the experiences of home and away, exile and diaspora.

180 x 300cm signed, dated and inscribed with title on reverse

These two paintings mark a departure from the format of the iconic single portrait, not only by incorporating multiple figures but by placing a self-portrait of the artist at the centre of each work – ‘me, between places and people’, as Maluka describes the subject of the paintings, ‘a reflection of where I am in the world right now’.

In addition to painting, Maluka also works in digital media, and has been integral to the success of the pioneering website www.africanhiphop.com. See also the artist’s website www.mustafamaluka.com.

37 / 38 / 39 Zanele Muholi (1972–) ‘Beloved’ series 2005 silver gelatin prints 40 x 50cm each each in an edition of 10

Trained as a photographer at the Market Photo Workshop, and a prominent activist in black lesbian empowerment organisations, Muholi came to national attention in September 2004 with her exhibition Visual sexuality: only half the picture at the Johannesburg Art Gallery. Whether confronting hate crimes against black lesbians or documenting the accoutrements of sex and sexual identity (strap-on dildos, breast-wrapping), Muholi was able to represent the black female body in a frank yet intimate way that challenged the history of the portrayal of black women’s bodies in documentary photography. As Desiree Lewis writes about an image in Muholi’s hate crimes series: ‘Historically, black women’s bodies have often been the subject of voyeuristic consumption, the consumption not only of black women’s sexuality, but also of black women’s trauma and pain.’ Muholi works with the conventions of documentary photography, but ‘at the same time, the codes of these conventions are unsettled as [she] creates cognitive space for the subjectivity of the woman in her photograph’ (‘Against the grain: black women and sexuality’, Agenda, 63, 2005, p15).

In recent work, Muholi frankly depicts and finds beauty in such taboo subjects as menstrual blood and used sanitary pads, and – as part of a series on breasts – ample, abundant female flesh that clearly does not conform to stereotypes of women’s bodies.

The Beloved series, which depicts the intimacy of two black lesbian lovers, might seem less provocative in its sheer beauty, but reminds us all the more forcefully of the absence of images of black women loving each other, in full possession of their own bodies and subjectivity, in the media that we consume every day.

Muholi, the winner of the 2005 Tollman Award, will publish a book of her work in March 2006, coinciding with an exhibition at Michael Stevenson (29 March – 29 April 2006).

40 Nicholas Hlobo (1975–) ‘Igqirha lendlela’ 2005 leather jacket, rubber inner tube, ribbon, blouse, bust 61 x 58 x 67cm

overleaf: sketch for performance

A biker’s jacket modified through the addition of a hump made of inner tube stitched together with red ribbon, Igqirha lendlela is also a performance piece that requires the jacket’s wearer to mingle with people in social situations. Hlobo writes: The character hopes to behave like any normal person would. He’d visit exhibitions, go to restaurants, window shop, go to libraries, meet people, etc. He carries himself in a way that proves he has pride and does not find anything wrong with himself.

The title is derived from the Xhosa choral song Igqirha lendlela nguqongqothwane.

This means that the dung beetle is the doctor of the road. Dung beetles’ amazing ability to roll balls of dung using their hind legs says a lot to me about their courage and confidence. They are not intimidated by having to move things larger than their bodies. The song refers to those who are wise and educated (in various ways) and says that they are the ones who know the way forward.

The altered jacket and the performance allude to the heavy baggage we carry as South Africans. The fact that the baggage is put at the back of the garment suggests that we will work hard at putting the past where it belongs – behind us.

I used rubber from inner tubes because of its relation to my previous works, and stitched the pieces together using red ribbon. Red is such a dramatic colour – we use it as a symbol of love; Aids is coded by the same colour; it warns us of danger when driving on the streets; it is the same colour that was used to mark the Zulu and baSotho men who fought on the British side in the 1879 battle of Rorke’s Drift.

The motorcycle jacket came from a second-hand clothing shop. It bears a Triton logo on the top left pocket. Apparently the brand name Triton was born at the end of the 1960s when Norton decided to put a Triumph Bonneville engine into his famous Featherbed frame. The jacket is made in Korea but the Triton is a British idea. In the small pocket I found a piece of paper from a fortune cookie, reading: ‘You will pass a difficult test that will make you happier.’

The inside label is illustrated with two roses and reads ‘a rose is a rose’. This supports the conversation I attempt to create with the materials I use in my works.

It relates to things that are hard and fragile, things that are lovely and inviting yet dangerous. One can relate that to our heritage in South Africa – it is beautiful and inviting, yet capable of inflicting pain.

Hlobo was included on the exhibition In the making: materials and process at Michael Stevenson in August 2005. A graduate of the Wits Technikon, he spent three months this year in residence at the Thami Mnyele Foundation studios in Amsterdam. His first solo show will take place at Michael Stevenson in August 2006.

41 Churchill Madikida (1973–) ‘Nemesis I’ 2005

Madikida has become known for his videos and related prints in which he interrogates his Xhosa heritage, and particularly the initiation rite of circumcision. In his recent exhibition at Michael Stevenson he extended his investigations to HIV/Aids and its devastating impact on individuals, cultures and society. He writes:

lambda print 107 x 106cm edition of 5

I have watched the annihilation from the sidelines. My sister lived with HIV for more than nine years and passed away recently [in April 2005] … Her death made me realise the extent of the despair that the virus is causing to millions of people both infected and affected by it. This exhibition is about my personal journey but reflects on millions of other people’s experiences as well.

The title of the exhibition was Status, a term commonly used to indicate people’s position in society but also used to denote whether or not someone is HIV positive.

In choosing this title, Madikida plays on this ambiguity to point out that ‘the deadly virus does not care about class, and transcends boundaries such as gender, race and sexuality’. The exhibition included a major installation and two new video projections, Virus and Nemesis, the latter forming the basis for this lambda print.

Madikida is the Standard Bank Young Artist for 2006, an award entailing a national touring exhibition that will begin at the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, in June 2006. He was born in Butterworth in the Eastern Cape and lives in Johannesburg where until recently he was Collections Curator at Constitution Hill. He was the joint recipient of the Tollman Award in 2003 and a selector for the 2004 Brett Kebble Art Awards. Madikida has participated in group exhibitions including Personal affects: power and poetics in contemporary South African art at the Museum for African Art and the Cathedral of St John the Divine, New York, 2004.

42 Wim Botha (1974–) ‘Memento Mori’ 2005 artificial marble, imbuia, neon bust: 95 x 75 x 35cm cape: 115 x 175 x 60cm neon: 330 x 235cm installation dimensions variable

Botha, the Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art 2005, consistently reflects on and subverts the symbolic imagery of power, religion and art history in his complex installations. His touring exhibition A Premonition of War (at Durban Art Gallery until 22 January, then travelling to Bloemfontein, Cape Town and Johannesburg) includes such works as Scapegoat, the crucified figure of a satyr carved from anthracite; the Mieliepap Pietà, a life-size, mirror-image replica of Michelangelo’s original, made from maize meal and resin; and the bronze sculpture Abraham and Isaac, in which the son refuses his own sacrifice and turns on the father.

Memento Mori recalls two works from Botha’s exhibition Cold Fusion: gods, heroes and martyrs, held at Michael Stevenson in April/May 2005. These are the Vanitas painting which formed part of Tremor, a simulated room with a pressed ceiling suspended mid collapse; and Skeletor, the prototype for a bronze action figure with death’s head and skin stripped away to expose the flesh. These works serve as memento mori, artistic reminders of mortality, and in so doing invoke – and bring into question – centuries of ideologies determining attitudes towards life and death.

The online encyclopaedia Wikipedia offers the following: [I]n Classical antiquity … the chief thrust of memento mori was the theme of ‘carpe diem’, ‘seize the day’, which would have entailed the advice to ‘eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.’ … But the thought came into its own with Christianity, whose emphasis on Heaven, Hell, and the salvation of the soul brought death to the forefront of consciousness. As such most memento mori works are products of Christian art. In the Christian context, the memento mori acquires a moralizing purpose quite opposed to the Nunc est bibendum [‘now is the time to drink’] theme of Classical antiquity. To the Christian, the prospect of death serves to emphasize the emptiness and fleetingness of earthly pleasures, luxuries, and achievements, and thus also as an invitation to focus one’s thoughts on the prospect of the afterlife. (www.wikipedia.org) These and other works exemplify Botha’s stated interest in ‘the power that a system of beliefs has over human thought, the blindness that it creates, and the inability to be objective that it results in’ (‘In conversation with Michael Stevenson’, Wim Botha, Cape Town, 2005, p64).

43 Tracy Payne (1964–) ‘We are One’ 2005 oil on canvas, six panels

Payne held a solo exhibition, entitled Sacred Yin, at Michael Stevenson in September 2005. For this show she inscribed on a long wall of the gallery, in pale pink dripping paint, the words of Anaïs Nin: ‘And the day came when the risk (it took) to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.’ This tension between holding back and letting go, restraint and exploration, encapsulates her concerns as an artist.

208.5 x 180.5cm signed, dated and inscribed with title on reverse

The Sacred Yin paintings follow on from Payne’s ‘Post-Tokyo’ phase, in which she found inspiration from a trip to Japan in search of sakura, the cherry blossom, as well as the art of kinbaku, or erotic rope bondage. In the recent works the ropes are cast off and flowers are morphed into patterns reminiscent of mandalas, embodying a sense of spiritual equanimity. In the kaleidoscopic six-panel paintings, forming a hexagon, sacred geometry emerges with the balancing of feminine (inverted) and masculine triangular forms integral to the structure. The mirroring technique creates suggestive forms in which flowers evoke fleshy orifices and limbs entwine to suggest petals and vines. The paintings combine seductive beauty with an intimate knowledge of the trauma that precedes new life.

As Payne wrote in the Sacred Yin catalogue, she combines imagery painted with photographic precision together with the abstract language of washes and drips: This demands focus and discipline, and it is within these strict confines that I find the time and space to meditate. I love painting and the act of painting calms me, it lowers my heartbeat and slows my breathing. It takes time for my paintings to grow, sometimes months, each one demanding devotion and attention until its completion.

We are One is the sixth and final work in her series of hexagonal canvases.

Catalogue no 18 December 2005 Written by Michael Stevenson and Sophie Perryer Additional research by Jackie Loos Edited and designed by Sophie Perryer Photography by Kathy Comfort-Skead Scanning by Tony Meintjes Printed by Hansa Reproprint

Michael Stevenson has been dealing in South African art since 1990. Initially focusing on 19th and 20th century painting, as well as art from south-east Africa, the gallery expanded to encompass contemporary art in May 2003 with the opening of a space in Green Point, Cape Town. Joined by Kathy ComfortSkead, Andrew Da Conceicao and Sophie Perryer, the gallery has hosted a series of widely acclaimed solo and group exhibitions, most of which have been accompanied by catalogues. This is Michael Stevenson’s 10th annual ‘season’ exhibition.

MICHAEL STEVENSON www.michaelstevenson.com