Artists included in the  Exhibition

Johannes Segogela (1936-)
The Devil
Dated: 1989
Medium: Wood and paint
Measurements: 645x490x550

Segogela's work is informed by and central to his passionate spiritual belief centered on Christianity.
A former welder by profession, Segogela's meticulously rendered small-scale wooden sculptures are often underscored by a cautionary message, warning of the Day of Judgement. Though the theme of the devil is universal, one cannot help but bring a southern African context to it. In times of horrendous oppression, the idea of an apocalypse seems to bring hope to those under persecution with the promise that the wrongdoers will be severely punished.

Billy Mandindi (1967-)
Fire Games
Dated: 1985
Medium: Painted tin, wire and wood
Measurements: 320, 720x1235

Mandindi studied Fine Art at the University of Cape Town and since the mid-1980s has exhibited regularly both at home and abroad.
This work was created during the first state of emergency in 1985 and reflects the hardships and anxieties of residents in townships under military siege. This militarised urban landscape is a manifestation of the structural violence that was deemed essential in order to maintain the institutionalised foundation of an apartheid society.
The artist employed bright colours and used miniature elements that endow the work with a playful dimension that is in stark contrast to reality of the dangerous political "games" of the time.

David Goldblatt (1930-)
Victoria Cobokana, housekeeper, with her son Sifiso and daughter Onica, Johannesburg, June 1999. 
Victoria died of Aids 13 December 1999, Sifiso died of Aids 12 January 2000, Onica is infected with Aids and is not expected to live.
Dated: 1999
Medium: Digital print
Measurements: 1200x1000

Goldblatt became interested in photography while at high school and taught himself the basic skills while studying for a Bachelor of Commerce degree. From 1963 onward he devoted himself entirely to this profession, working on a broad variety of assignments for magazines, corporations and institutions. His personal work has consisted of a series of critical explorations of South African society and has been exhibited and published extensively since 1960.
A photographer who confesses to having been rendered deficient in circumstances of confrontation and violence which was the province of documentary activism during the apartheid period, Goldblatt is often drawn to the quiet and on the surface, seemingly mundane.

This portrait of a mother and her two children exudes a beguiling sense of tranquillity until the image presented collides with the knowledge of the impending crisis that is about envelop them. The viewer is jolted by a sense of seizure as soon as it is discovered that the family is in the throes of a different kind of violence - a debilitating disease for which there is no cure. The extreme disconnection between the image and knowledge is an intense manifestation of photography's ability to manipulate the psyche.

Given Makhubela ( )
The Road to Democracy
Dated: 1995
Medium: Glass beads, cloth, thread
Measurements: 1140x1370

The joy and optimism of the first democratic elections held in South Africa in 1994 are captured in this luminous celebration. The Road to Democracy is an excellent example of an artist skilled in traditional beadwork techniques, who transfers those skills to making a statement about her experiences. The bright colours, textures and relief effects of the beads add enormously to the dynamism and excitement that characterises the piece.

Keith Dietrich (1950-)
Sidney, Wandile, Aubrey, Richard and Arthur
Dated 1985-86
Medium: Alkyd, oil on canvas
Measurements: 900x3000

After many years as Associate Professor in the Department of History of Art and Fine Arts at the University of South Africa, Dietrich now heads up the Fine Art Department at the University of Stellenbosch. Having studied at universities in South Africa and abroad, Dietrich has acquired a highly developed technical resource that renders him capable of working with equal dexterity in watercolour, oil and pastel creating incredibly realistic images. The artist works from photographs and employs a highly illusionistic airbrush technique in order to retain the viewer's attention to his subject. With the low angle viewpoint, the artist imparts the work with a startling confrontational effect. Seen from this low angle, the figures loom large over the spectator denying him/her the distance for undisturbed contemplation.

Tito Zungu (c1948-)
Untitled
Dated: 1997
Medium: Pen, ink, pencil
Measurements: 470x640

Zungu's birthdate is given at somewhere in the late 1940's. He was born in the province of KwaZulu/Natal to parents who were dispossessed and took a job as a farm labourer at the age of 14. Never having the opportunity to attend school he grew up not being able to read and write. 

The artist's highly individual style developed from a hobby of decorating envelopes with coloured ball-point pens. The rectilinear decorative tendency was initially dictated by the shape of the envelopes that he used to decorate for other miners as a source of extra income. A great sense of design and balance accompanied by a naive pre-occupation with details and combined with a highly refined sense of colour co-ordination resulted in successful decorations.

Zungu found black patrons because his drawings offered fellow miners a desperate flight from the reality of the horrific and lonesome hostel life and a way of impressing family members in rural areas. After winning a prize at an art exhibition in 1971 his images became much sought after by workers and gallerists alike. He never left his job as a cook and drew only when inspired to do so.

Jeremy Wafer (1953-)
Scratched, Pocked, Lumped,
Dated: 1995
Medium: fibre-glass, pigment
Measurements: 1500 x 3000 x 500

In terms of modernism, artworks are regarded as objects in themselves, that is, removed from the real world and matters considered extrinsic to art, like narrative, description, subject matter and content were deemed superfluous.

Jeremy Wafer's sculptures are "stripped" down to pure form, which is not referential. They are given resonance by the use of textures reminiscent of body scarification and anthills. The artist frequently uses diptych and triptych formats to place his moulds in a relationship which when viewed from a distance they appear identical but on close inspection show subtle differences in their textured surfaces. His works can be summed up as contemplative pieces.

Gavin Younge (1947-)

Botha's Baby, 1981
Dated: 1981
Medium: Cast iron and welded steel
Measurements: 1210x540x610

Younge is a sculptor whose iconography constantly reveals social concerns. It must be stated though, that his work is not simply about actual events happening around him but more about an exploration of a less specific area of personal unease. One of these concerns is the brutalising effect that militarism has on people as evidenced in Botha's Baby, a steel baby's chair that has a recess in the feeding table for a gun. While revealing the extreme tension between power and vulnerability Botha's Baby illustrate the foolishness of a society which places a high premium on security measures designed to keep the "other" from "sharing in the wealth of this country," the third clause of the Freedom Charter.

Sandile Zulu (1960-)
Frontline with Centurion Models
Medium: Mixed media
Measurements: 1000x7000

Zulu employs elements of fire and water to create abstract collages and constructions. For this artist, the medium has become his subject matter. While not being representational or overt in the exploration of the struggle and pain of the black population, his works are nevertheless pregnant with expressive and metaphorical meaning. The underlying tensions of township existence and the urban/rural dichotomies are constantly present.

Fire and water, wind and soil are essential elements of life. For this artist, these elements allude to life, creation and destruction, colonisation and decolonisation, revolution and liberation, purgation and cleansing, purification and renewal. All these provide a framework for engaging with socio-historical issues in a metaphorical rather than a literal way. 

Moshekwa Langa (1975-)
Untitled
Dated: 1995
Medium: Mixed media
Measurements: 3000x5000x7000

One of South Africa's best-known contemporary artists, Moshekwa Langa has exhibitied extensively in many countries since his first solo exhibition in 1995. Most often using an installation format, his work is characterised by the use of throwaway materials such as discarded sacking, plastic sheeting, shopping bags, bottles, shredded paper, industrial waste, cooking fat and chemical disinfectants. 

This Untitled work, popularly known as 'Skins' makes use of discarded cement bags ripped into shapes that resemble dried animal hides. The paper surfaces are smeared with layers of industrial lubricants, Vaseline, turpentine and creosote and were first exhibited on the circular washing line commonly found in suburban back yards.

The work, like Langa himself, is difficult to pin down, offering layer upon layer of meaning. Do the 'skins' allude to the wholesale slaughter of animals as seen in the popular sport of hunting? Do the noxious chemicals refer to those used on a daily basis by domestic workers in an effort to keep South African homes clean? Or to the act of hanging out one's dirty laundry? In speaking about his work he has this to say: 'I think that my work is unclassifiable in terms that a lot of people are used to talking about South African art and black art. I don't think people expect black people to make the work I do... and not having an art education makes it all the more complex'.

David Koloane (1938-)
Street Dogs
Dated 1996
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Measurements: 2000x1480x40

Koloane studied at the Bill Ainslie Studios in Johannesburg, the Triangle Workshop in American and has a diploma in Museum Studies from the University of London. He has curated a number of exhibitions on South African art that have traveled internationally and is also an accomplished writer. Street Dogs was first exhibited on his solo exhibition in 1996 at the Art First gallery in London. The painting was exhibited along with the following statement which gives some insight into the work, as well as into the reality that many South Africans living in townships are confronted with on a daily basis: 'There is always some focus on street children but very little, if any, on street dogs. The dogs are exposed to even more hazards and abuses. Their existence is almost a minute to minute feat of survival. The dogs move around in packs like hyenas and can be just as vicious. They drift around waste dumps, garbage cans, wedding and funeral ceremonies. The commuters, on the other hand, leave their homes against a mist of brazier fire, smog and industrial emissions. They return at dusk under a blanket of dark and ominous layers which hover over the township so much that shape and form become blurred'.

Jackson Hlungwani (1923-)
Christ Playing Football
Dated: 1989
Medium: Wood
Measurements: 1705x500x440

The son of a mineworker, Hlungwani was born in Klein Letaba in the Northern Province. He worked as a migrant labourer for many years and in 1944, after an industrial accident in which he lost a finger, he decided to return to his rural home, the small village of Mbokoto. A few years later he was ordained as a priest in the African Zionist Church. As leader of the subsect 'Yesu Geleliya One apostle in Sayoni Alt and Omega' he is deeply religious and spent many years constructing a shrine in this isloated area, which he calls the New Jerusalem. Words such as prophet, shaman and visionary are used to describe him. 

From the late-1980s, as his reputation as a sculptor grew, Hlungwani agreed to the dismantling and sale of objects from the altars. The shrine was constructed using traditional stonemasonry techniques and was populated by large figures hewn from local wood depicting Christ figures, angels, crosses, fish and many smaller decorative items. Hlungwani holds regular religious services within these walls. In referring to his sculpture he says 'it comes from God himself, and from the Lord, and from the Holy Spirit'.

In 1978 he developed a lesion on his right leg which resisted treatment and which he suspected was due to the many years spent working in an asbestos mine. This affliction affected him so deeply that large ball shaped growths appeared on the limbs of many of his subsequent sculptures. In bringing this suspected malignancy to life through the use of these effigies he hoped to avoid his fears.

Lisa Brice (1968-)
Make your Home your Castle
Dated: 1995
Medium: Mixed media
Measurements: 3000x3000

Lisa Brice is a practising artist working out of her studio in Observatory, Cape Town. She gained a strong German following after a sell out show at the Hänel Gallery in Frankfurt in 1993 and has since exhibited internationally on numerous solo and group shows as well as art fairs and biennales.

Brice's work is often made in response to personal experience. In 1990 an intruder broke into her home in Cape Town leaving the walls smeared with blood and her housemate near to death after stabbing him fourteen times. In an attempt to come to terms with the horror of this violent attack, Brice produced a series of works using household materials that she attacked with paint and razor blades.

In this quieter piece made for an exhibition at the The Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town, she exploited the site that was intitially constructed as a fort and served for many years as the headquarters of the South African Defence Force. She draws on her earlier personal experience but comments more generally on criminal violence and the unstable economic and social conditions within South Africa. Using typical middle class paraphenalia she describes the interior of many South African homes. Fear and paranoia are expressed through soft embroidered pillows reminding the home-owner to check that the alarm has been switched on, the Trellidor locked and offers the number of the Flying Squad in case of an emergency during the night.

Paul Stopforth (1945-)
The Visit
Dated: 1986
Medium: Charcoal
Measurements: 1040 x 1400

The Visit, a large drawing dating from 1986, has strong correspondences to another work by Stopforth in the SA National Gallery's permanent collection, viz. The Interrogators of 1979. Both are graphic works conceived on a large scale and austerely executed in black-and-white. Both share a sense of menace and foreboding and the subject matter is unpleasant. The two works also convey, in a most graphic way, a depiction of a repressed and violent society. But, whereas The Interrogators is a direct reference to the interrogators and torturers of Steve Biko, The Visit is an oblique and allusive reference to a repressive society. The Visit also shows the influence on Stopforth of the work of the contemporary British artist, Francis Bacon.

Marlene Dumas (1953-)
The Next Generation
Dated: 1994-5
b 1953, Cape Town, Western Province
Medium: Mixed media on paper
Measurements: 3000x7000

Portrait groups feature prominently in the work of Marlene Dumas, a South African born artist who has lived in The Netherlands for many years and who enjoys an international reputation. In the portrait groups, Dumas explores the traditional group portrait genre from a late 20th century perspective. Noticeably different from the traditional approach is her use of separate images - and the absence, therefore, of the accepted composition for a group portrait - and the way in which she explores and questions the boundaries between artist and the people portrayed. Unlike some of her previous group portraits like Black Drawing (1991-92) and Rejects, the Next Generation does not depict Dumas' fascination with the grotesque; instead it conveys a sense of optimism unusual for Dumas. This is in keeping with the times in which it was created - the birth of the new democratic society in South Africa. However, the optimism is tempered with anxiety.

Willem Boshoff (1951-)
Blind Alphabet C: Cocculiferous to Cymbiform
Dated: 1993
Medium: Sheet-metal, wire, base-board, velvet, wood
Measurements: 600x5000x7000

Apart from exhibiting extensively, Boshoff devotes most of his time in research and preparation for artworks and the teaching of art. His research projects include the drawing-up of botanical checklists at all major botanical gardens of the world and the writing of dictionaries.

Willem Boshoff is fascinated by language. He has compiled a personal dictionary of thousands of obscure and little used words thereby ensuring their preservation through what he terms a 'philosophical ecology'. He is interested in 'language systems that stonewall or subvert traditional gallery practice to the advantage of disenfranchised communities such as the blind, and the 10 historically disowned language groups of South Africa'.

The Blind Alphabet C: Cocculiferous to Cymiform which the SA National Gallery, acquired in 1995, forms part of a larger work titled Blind Alphabet ABC which was first exhibited on the Outside Inside core exhibition of the 1995 Johannesburg Biennale. The description that follows, was prepared by Julia Charlton for the accompanying pamphlet: 

Boshoff has identified over 340 unusual words that describe form, structure and texture and that begin with the letters A, B, C. He has carved a wooden shape depicting each work, with key works embossed in Braille on each object. Each shape is hidden in its own wire mesh box with a Braille information plaque on the lid of each box. A Braille embossed dictionary in four volumes containing morphological terms, their derivation and applications, is also on display.

To the sighted the installation looks like a cemetery. The sighted are not able to see the wooden shapes unless blind people are willing to act as guides for them, take out the objects and read the plaques. The sighted experience frustration as their expectation at being able to see is thwarted. They are dependent on the goodwill of blind people to experience the work. Blind guides' highly developed sense of touch is necessary to provide visual access for the sighted. Boshoff reverses the power relations between blind and sighted people. 

Helen Mmakgabo Mmapula Sebidi (1943-)
The Mother Holds the Sharp Side of the Knife
Dated: 1988
Medium: Pastel
Measurements: 1865x2800

Helen Mmakgoba Mmapula Sebidi was brought up and greatly influenced by her grandmother and mentor, a traditional mural painter and worker in clay. Her interest in art was also encouraged by one of her employers whilst working in domestic service in the 1960's and later by the artist John Koenakeefe Mohl who arranged for her first exhibition in 1997.

Sebidi was a painter experienced in oils when she discovered abstraction and the liberating technique of collage. She describes the process: "First I kept on drawing figures in the studio, feet, hands, portraits; and I kept all this rubbish from the whole year piling up on the carpet. At the end of the year I said to myself, 'I want to see if I can grow these up', I took myself away from other people - I said 'Now break all this in pieces and see what comes out.'"

What came out was the deconstruction and reconstruction of space and form, of images literally torn apart, fragmented and reworked, reconstituted in collage. Both process and result become metaphors for disruption, for the rift between rural and urban existence, between past and present, between dream and reality. The accumulated surfaces buckle before the spectator with marks and shapes and tears, with limbs or parts of limbs. The compelling narrative is severed and disjointed, the figures seemingly unrelated in action; yet emotionally and pictorially all is united, inseparable. The artist has commented on this work: '...In African tradition they say it is the woman who holds the sharp side of the knife. Here, woman is holding the knife in this way and is saying - this is what I have to do, and it is my way.'

Malcolm Payne (1946-)
Tunnel Vision
Dated: 1991
Medium: Acrylic, mock gold leaf, gold paint, underfelt, mirrors on shaped canvas
Measurements: 2760x3770

Malcolm Payne is well known internationally for his installation and video work.. He lives and works in Cape Town where he teaches at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town. 

Tunnel Vision originally formed part of a series of paintings entitled, 'Market Forces'. It is anything but a dry, sentimental, descriptive narrative depicting the toiling, suffering masses at work, as one might expect from a painter dealing with gold mining in South Africa and its sub-texts - migrant labour, exploitation, class, race, urbanisation and so on. Instead, it is an opulent, unconventionally shaped canvas of textural complexity and dazzling visuality which, rather that feeding us with a clear-cut statement, embroils us in reflection on mining. Made to be experienced as a visual expression of its content rather than understood by way of explanation, Tunnel Vision comprises many references to mining - the hats of mining magnates, the names of mining companies drawn from a Johannesburg stock market report, body parts, chains, roots growing into the cavities left by miners, and the tunnel itself. While these references anchor the work firmly in its subject matter, Tunnel Vision is as much about mining and its machinations as it is about painting in the late 20th century i.e. painting without the baggage of conventional representation or the window-to-the-world approach of the Renaissance. Thus the work is in the form of an ellipse with attached elements rather than the orthodox rectangle of landscape painting; instead of proportion there are distortions of scale; and a bird's eye view takes the place of perspective. All of which make for a sumptuous and sensual work of visual vigour, dynamism and impact that disorients and challenges. 

Kagiso Patrick Mautloa (1952-)
Recontruction
Dated: 1994
Medium: Post Office canvas, wood, paint
Measurements: 2450x1270

The abstract quality of Pat Mautloa's work is evident in this work titled Reconstruction. Here he has chosen to represent the turning point in South Africa's history and the advent of the first democratic elections through the use of three official mailbags. Made in 1994, the three bags hang adjacent to each other each representing the past, the present and the future. In the first inserted panel chaotic and undefined monochrome shapes represent the darkness and pessimism of the past. The central panel is much more structured and employs the use of colour to underscore a feeling of construction and cohesion and the third panel displays the bright abstract shapes of the South African flag flying above a single unified landscape.

Gavin Jantjes
Half the sky
Dated: 1998
Medium: oil on canvas
Measurements: 1810x3500x40]

Well known South African artist, Gavin Jantjes currently lives and works in Oslo, Norway were he is Artistic Director at the Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter. He describes Half the sky:

The title for the painting comes from a Chinese proverb 'Women hold up half the sky'. All the main constellations of the Southern night sky have been replaced with the names of women from South African history. Starting with Nandi, the mother of Chaka and ending with Winnie Madikizela Mandela. The three colours green, black and gold are primary to the work. They are also connected to the ANC. One of the reasons for this painting is that I had never done a work specifically about women, as I believe that they have a voice with which they address the world. Unfortunately men hardly listen to them and therefore have a much narrower view of the world. My painting was more of a praise poem for fifty percent of the people who make South African history what it is. The materials wax and earth are paramount in African creativity. Both are malleable and natural. Africa gave the world the lost wax method of casting and pottery is extensive, but its association with 'women's work' makes us forget its importance. Ceramic has more association to Mother Earth, the generative deity, the maker, creator and giver of life. The plant-like sculpture echoes fruit or seeds but also has a spikiness. The two objects speak about the never-ending cycle of death and creation.

Berni Searle (1964-)
Traces
Dated: 2000
Medium: architectural tracing paper, spices
Measurements: 3000x4000x3000

Berni Searle lives and works in Cape Town as a full-time artist at Greatmore Studios. Her installations often incorporate sound, photography, found objects and other sculptural materials. She has participated in the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale in the 7th Cairo Biennale where she was awarded an Unesco prize. She received a major prize at DAK'ART 2000, the biennale held in Dakar, Senegal. She describes her work:

The use of spices in the work has an historical significance in terms of the trade in commodities, which included slaves, via the Cape Dutch colony in the 17th century. The obvious connection of using spices to express ideas about my identity stems from a part of my heritage, my maternal great-grandfathers having come from Mauritius and Saudi Arabia, each of them marrying Cape Malay women. My great-grandfather from Mauritius was a cook and I have indirectly experienced his expertise through the food that my mother cooks, pointing to food as a cultural signifier. Apart from my physical features, very little connects me to this heritage, one of the tentative aspects being food.

My paternal great-grandfathers came from Germany and England. This effectively means that the local or potential indigenous part of me can be traced by looking at the lineage of my maternal and paternal great-grandmothers i.e. women. Tracing this heritage is an ongoing process, often hampered by a reluctance of relatives to talk about where they come from, especially those who were re-classified white. Often, amongst 'coloured' people. Tracing this heritage is avoided because of the negative stereotypes surrounding indigenous people and slaves that were brought to the Cape. A further complication is the lack of official documentation such as birth, death and marriage certificates, which forms an essential part of this process of 'tracing'.

Andries Botha (1952-)
Icons and Other Playthings
Dated 1991
Medium: bronze
Measurements: 435 x 210 x 175

In the early 1980s Andries Botha began to realise that European traditions of the conceptualisation and execution of art could not be applicable to the South African situation and his own striving for an affinity for his place and time. He subjected the issues of formalism, of form and content and the appropriateness of interpretative means to intense scrutiny and began to experiment with indigenous materials - in a conscious effort to find alternatives. Out of this search came a series of groundbreaking sculptures in which he combined wattle, thatching grass, metal, wood, industrial elements and neon.

In 1991 he was the Standard Bank Young Artist and as part of a large body of work, he returned to bronze casting, a process that belongs to Africa as well as Europe. An unusual aspect of the small bronzes was that they did not serve as studies for the large works, but were in fact extensions of themes and ideas. In this way Icons and Other Playthings echoes a monumental work in the Sang collection, alleenspraak in Paradys (monologue in Paradise) of the same year. Made of rubber, wood, metal and neon, alleenspraak in Paradys takes the form of an enigmatic ritual that evokes primeval mysteries while simultaneously probing into contemporary reality. An enormous wire figure with a bright pink flashing neon heart holds a wire-mesh robe that flows towards the reclining black Venus figure. She is a sensuous black African goddess, whose earthiness is contradicted by the strips of tyre that cover her wire framework and that are held in place by numerous sharp bolts. An animal - a cow or a bull - kneels at her feet. The animal is carved from wood, with complex joints. In Icons and Other Playthings the confrontation between woman and animal is intimate, markedly sexual. The theme is expanded by the addition of a crouching figure on the animal's back and a windmill.

Sue Williamson (1941-)
For Thirty Years Next to his Heart
Dated: 1990
Medium: Hand-coloured print in handmade frame
Measurements: 2000x2000

Dompas
It's gone now, part of our recent historical past. Future generations may find it difficult to comprehend the power the passbook had over the lives of black South Africans, but that power was complete. No passbook, no rights. No right to work, no right to live in the city. Even those who were in possession of a dompas had to have it on hand at all times. 'Left it at home? You lie. Get in the van'.

Who thinks now of the police vans that used to roam the white suburbs, checking on illegally employed domestic workers? There were thousands of black women who were scared of being picked up. Pass cases used to go through the courts at the rate of one every few minutes. Shameful as it is, it is our history. 

For Thirty Years Next to his Heart is a record of every page of Ncithakalo John Ngesi's passbook, issued to him on the 20th October 1955, and carried in the inside pocket of his jacket every single day until the day in 1990 when he gave it to me. Although by that time he no longer needed to carry it, the habit of a lifetime was strong.

So worn, so used was the book with hundreds of signatures and different coloured stamps filling the little pages that it had the quality of a precious object. It was a record of one man's life, as prescribed by the State.

I conceived For Thirty Years almost as a filmstrip. In the first frame, John Ngesi's hand is pulling his passbook out of an inner pocket, as he had so many hundreds of times in the past. Each page tells its own story. Sometimes a hand comes in, or a rubber stamp, or at the end, when the writing and the stamps stop, there is a tobacco packet and a train ticket. A man's life restricted by purple stamps and signatures and measured out in pages. 

The book is divided into sections - Labour Bureau, Employer's name etc, and for each division I made appropriate frames. The Labour Bureau section, for example, has old 'Introduction to Bantu Workseeker' forms glued round the edge? The photocopying of each page seemed a particularly apt process. That's what happens to documents. They get photocopied and kept and filed, and when the information is no longer relevant, thrown out and forgotten.

Functional art has always interested me, and the idea of pasting pass book pages round brightly painted tin trunks, the kind used by migrant workers, seemed to extend the idea of baggage which has to be carried through life, and loads, and identifying labels and time passing, and journeys.

Sue Williamson (1941-)
Can't forget, can't remember
Dated: 2000
Medium: cd-rom

A burning question exists in the mind of a victim...do you remember what you did to me? Face to face at last with the perpetrator, this question can be asked. In an interactive video piece, Sue Williamson looks at two moments in the proceedings of the Truth Commission when this occurred. In Can't forget, can't remember, recorded transcripts from the hearings are played over text and flashback images of the event. The viewer is cast in the role of judge uncovering evidence - standing at a lectern in a darkened booth, the viewer must move a courser over the screen via a computer mouse in order to get the action to advance. 

The flawed nature of memory, and of the whole process of the Truth and Reconciliation commission, becomes apparent as the gap between the recollections of victims and perpetrator emerges. In this new medium, an interactive video projection, Sue Williamson's collaborator is graphic designer Tracy Gander. The music was done by Arnold Erasmus.

Background notes to Extract 1: Jeff Benzien/Ashley Forbes

Captain Jeff Benzien was a security policeman based in the Western Cape notorious for his brutal treatment of the political activists who fell into his hands. His boast was that he could 'break' any prisoner in less the 30 minutes with his torture methods, one of which involved tying a wet bag around a prisoner's head, thus cutting off the person's air supply. In July 1997, Benzien appeared in front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Cape Town, seeking amnesty for the death of Ashley Kriel and the torture of numerous victims, some of whom took the opportunity to question him directly. One of these was Ashley Forbes, whose memories of their earlier interchanges were very different from Benzien's.

Background notes to Extract 2: Dawie Ackerman/Gcinikhaya Makoma

In July 1993, five young members of the APLA - the Azanian people's Liberation Army, attacked the congregation of St James Church, in Kenilworth, Cape Town, and 11 people died. Marita Ackerman, the wife of Dawie Ackerman, was one of them. At the TRC, Ackerman tells the hitman, Gcinikhaya Makoma, his wife was wearing a blue coat, and was seated by the door... and asks if he can recall shooting her. But Makoma can remember only that "I fired some shots". The only member of the group convicted of the attack, Gcinikhaya Makoma, was granted amnesty in June 1998.

Jane Alexander (1959-)
Integration Programme: Man with TV, Dated: 1995
Medium: Mixed Media
Measurements: 1380x1000x2200

Award winning sculptor, Jane Alexander lives in Cape Town where she also teaches. Integration Programme: man with TV forms part of a body of work dating back to the early 1990's in which Alexander explores the notion of the individual as alienated and dislocated from society. Alexander draws an analogy between the largely unsuccessful 'Reintegration Programme' attempted in New York State, America during the 1980's whereby mentally disturbed patients were released back into society and the example of a young, rural man's attempt to integrate himself into an urban, industrialised world. The young man sits staring vacantly at a television screen on which a white man dressed in an equally shabby suit attempts repetitively and unsatisfactorily to readjust his attire in his own effort to integrate. The seated figure is obviously ill at ease and wears the typical garments of the migrant labourer. His traveling bag is close beside his chair. The figure gives expression to the difficulties experienced by the many thousands of men, who during the Apartheid years were forced to leave their families in the countryside and seek employment as labourers in the large, alienating and lonely industrial centres of South Africa.

Brett Murray (1961-)
Heritage: Milk and Blood
Dated: 1992
Medium: Mixed media
Measurements: 810x850x140

After graduating from the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town, Murray produced painted resin sculptures and later more complex steel drawings which although rooted in political comment are satirical in nature. His work is stylistically based in caricature and the theme of cross-cultural influence is often central to his works as evidenced in his wall sculptures of amongst others a figure of a black Richie Rich and another of Kentucky Fried Chicken's, Colonel Sanders sporting a large afro hairdo.

On a quieter note Heritage: Milk and blood explores the complex and often uncomfortable relationship between a Western European heritage on the one hand and an African heritage on the other. Here the artist juxtaposes the pristine but fragile, blue and white china tea cups with the raw metal outline of an African cheetah. These floating elements are anchored by a centrally placed wooden Southern African milk pail. A sinister and brutal note is introduced by the red bullet holes that pierce the animal's body. 

Jackson Nkumanda (1948-)
Presidential Inauguration
Dated: 1994
Medium: Mixed media
Measurements: 690x1090x170

One new strategy that has excited the imagination of 20th century artists has been the incorporation of found materials from the real world into a work of art. The list of artists who have explored the possibilities of these materials and who as a result have been liberated from tradition, stretches from Picasso to the present. This interest and the possibilities that it offers are constantly widening as evidenced in Jackson Nkumanda's work. Partly dictated by a lack of funds with which to buy traditional art making materials, Nkumanda utilises materials accessible to him from his environment in order to create township scenes. With elements of the picture angled on vertical surfaces, the artist produces unusual perspectives with small scale figures doing various chores in a richly textured landscape of daily life.

Having been the 'black sheep' of the international family for decades and the focus of world-wide condemnation as a result of its policies, South Africa attracted a different kind of focus on the 10th of April 1994 as the world stood still to witness the birth of a miracle. During the years of political struggle black South Africans had been deprived of freedom in any form by apartheid but the black artists were deprived of the freedom to express joy and appreciation of pleasure by their own compatriots. As evidenced in Nkumanda's Inauguration the chains which confined artistic freedom to express joy without guilt had finally been broken for black artists.

Willie Bester (1956-)
Head North
Dated: 1995
Medium: Mixed media
Measurements: 1800x3500x1200

'We despair of saving the colony from those evils which threaten it by turbulent and dishonest conduct of vagrants who are allowed to infest the country in any part, nor do we see any prospect of peace or happiness for our children in a country that is destructed by internal commotions' Piet Retief. Leader of the Voortrekkers. First line of the petition to the British who occupied the Cape in the 1830s.

Willie Bester's work Heading North seems to have reverberations of the Trekboers petition to the British who occupied the Cape in the 1830s. The Afrikaner ox was chosen by the Trekboers as an indigenous animal that could withstand the hardships of the interior and transport them to the so-called 'Promised Land'. However, meaning in Bester's work is always complex and multi-layered. On one hand Bester scrutinises, received ideas which have molded people's understanding of South African history as a result of indoctrination. He presents this history in a way that encourages the viewer to critically reassess and interrogate these ideas. Particular images from the past tend to have a potential to resonate with meaning in the present. Bester mingles historical episodes with current realities in order to critique history. While the sculpture has references to the historical Afrikaner exodus in the 1830s, the contemporary machine gun on the back of the ox echoes not only the Trekboers iron fist from the past but the continuation of physical aggression.

Vivienne Koorland (1957-)
Tomaz's Garden
Dated 1990
Medium: Card, oil, powder paint on canvas
Measurements: 765x880

Koorland's Tomaz's Garden uses a drawing of a house made by a child in the Terezin concentration camp as a source, and is but one in a series of her works in this vein. Within this series this work is exceptional for its use of colour as the artist's palette is usually restricted to greys, whites and blacks. The flowers in Tomaz's Garden are cut from postcards and collaged onto the picture's surface, creating, as the artist says, an impression of the jewelled carpets of flowers that are seen in late medieval paintings of the Virgin and Child, where the hortus conclusus symbolises purity and innocence. The image of the house, so often identified in psychological terms with the 'self', is a configuration of the primary elements of the human face. The flowers in this painting are from commercially-printed postcards of the protea, identified by many as South Africa's national flower. Their inclusion in the context of a work that deals ostensibly with the Holocaust evokes poignant reminders of the fate of the children of South Africa under apartheid.

William Kentridge (1955-)
Large Untitled Head 
Dated: 1991
Medium: Gouache, charcoal
Measurements: 1480x1190

A modern day renaissance man who has been tackling multisensory artforms, theatre forms, video and drawing since the 80s, Kentridge looms large not only in the South African art scene but is fêted and toasted by the international art world. In all these various media he demonstrates a high level of technical virtuosity and personal style with compositions that are remarkably simple, emphasising his draughting skill. His themes and visual approach are always extensions of his particular iconography. The same characters appear again and again in his drawings and films but they do not always represent specific individuals. Kentridge's free flowing style does not always lend itself to direct interpretations. Signs, symbols and metaphors inhabit his narratives. The artist believes that his body of work adds up to the meaning of his expression with each individual work being part of a process of daily 'diarising'. It is undeniable that Kentridge's work alludes to its own genesis in addition to capturing various moments in international and South African political scenarios without endeavouring to reduce artistic expression to a level of direct political discourse.

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