| publications annals of the s.a. museum african natural history books and popular publications publications for schools ordering procedure |
| venue hire south african museum planetarium s.a. national gallery old town house bertram house rust en vreugd bo-kaap museum slave lodge groot constantia koopmans-de wet house castle of good hope |
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The
Sasol Wax Art Award 2007 exhibition will be shown at the
This year’s prize was awarded to
Walter Oltmann for a cast metal installation using the ancient
technical process known as the ‘lost wax method’. The work consists
of fourteen pairs of aluminium hands supporting dowsing tools and
objects associated with mining or digging, and is entitled
Unearthing. While, on a literal level, the hands suggest practices
that are both a means of survival and of exploitation,
metaphorically they allude to the fact that ‘our generation is
looking to unearth concealed truths, unspoken histories that are
tied to the land’. 
Wayne Barker harnesses the industry
of bees in his installation The Bees, The Children,
The Bee Keeper, and The Artist, which he describes as ‘a
discovery of the possibility of healing with nature, within the
self, the ecosystem and ultimately, the whole of society’. In Sue
Williamson’s split-screen video, the viewer penetrates the secret
world behind the beauty parlour door. The video is not a documentary
on ‘waxing’ for the purpose of hair removal, but an exploration of
the ritual and meanings connected to this practice.
bathroom, in fragile wax paper,
suggests a dream-like world and, as she says, ‘our own transience as
human beings’. Andrew Verster explores tattooing as a type of body
marking that people use to proclaim identity and, in his powerful
installation of suspended panels constructed from layers of tissue
paper held together by wax, researches and applies ‘the intricacies
of a revived body art form’.