Throwback: Sasol New Signatures merit award 1997
It might be because brand image wasn’t yet such a big industry in the late 90s – but more likely, with apartheid censorship so fresh in everyone’s minds, society was wilfully not as conservative as a decade later when ‘Familieportret 2’ caused a ruckus for its allegorical references to canonical textbook depictions of Western idealised beauty.
‘Untitled: enemata (from the domestic comforts series)’ received a Sasol New Signatures Merit award in 1997, despite clearly showing a rather compromising shot of an anus and erect male member on one half of the modified found sculpture pieces. As alluded to by the title, the work refers to the not so charming boereraad that prescribes a lukewarm soapy enema to alleviate stubborn constipation. Juxtaposed with an Afrikaner Nationalist propaganda painting by W. H. Coetzer on the partner piece, the work proposes, in a tongue in cheek manner, a DIY cure for a ‘verkakte’ ideological mindset.
Shown here are contextual shots that place the sculpture in a white working class kitchen, to draw attention to more serious intertextual relationships and intersections of race, labour, privilege and agency.
At the time I held a part time job lecturing almost anything in the curriculum nobody else wanted to do, because I wanted to be a ‘working’ artist. I ended up spending more time working to make a living with very little time or energy left for making art. In the end even this particular artwork fell victim to those circumstances and was eventually used for its utilitarian content – for washing dishes. At the time, I convinced myself that in Duchampian terms the work was then finally complete.
