Latest work: Made in China
Made in China evolved from my journey to China from South Africa. It explores loss of identity in mass consumerism. The analogy of water is explored in global warming, diving, drowning and reflection. It tells a story of a foreigner overwhelmed by his existence in an Asian environment.
The exhibition will include large paintings and more intimate smoke drawings framed in antique Chinese window shutters.
SPLASH
Acrylics on canvas 2m x 1.5m
This painting is about embracing the depths of fitting into another world, to dive in and to take risks, to get wet and to surrender protection from the elements.
HEAVEN
Acrylics on canvas 2m x 1.5m
A central painting to the exhibition, this autobiographical piece is a reflection on industrial reality, identity, solid foundations and safety. A nod to Magritte.
LINES
Acrylics on canvas 2m x 1.5m
Visual, moral and mental lines are being crossed, like tightropes and power lines. This painting is about balance.
KING
Acrylics on canvas 2m x 1.5m
This series of three paintings looks at the pressure on young people to marry and have children amidst an economy of development and capitalist reward. Personal happiness is played against some greater good, making the individual disappear.
PRINCESS
Acrylics on canvas 2m x 1.5m
A dialogue with Velasquez’s Las Meninas, this painting has a sense of displacement. The pursuit of wealth and success leaves behind a generation of kids raised by grandparents, or growing up in private boarding schools.
QUEEN
Acrylics on canvas 2m x 1.5m
This painting concludes the triptych, depicting the archetypical matriarch crowned in development and infrastructure, like the king. She shows strength despite the social pressure to marry and have children.
PAPERWORK I
Acrylics on canvas 2m x 1.5m
This series of three paintings shows a faceless businessman in a haze of abstraction and collage of discarded consumer products.
SEA
Acrylics on canvas 2m x 1.5m
Here the businessman is in a box, and a sea of abstraction. The Chinese new year wish is to be safe and prosper.
PAPERWORK II
Acrylics on canvas 2m x 1.5m
Here the businessman is protecting himself from the elements, but he is immersed in water. Corporate success in keeping his head above water.
WHITE TIGER
Smoke drawing on Canson
500 x 500mm
Framed in antique Chinese window shutters
This series of smoke drawings depict extinct or endangered animal species from Asia as well as Africa. These drawings literally show elements of our environment going up in smoke if we don’t protect them for our children.
The drawings are framed in repurposed antique window shutters.
PAPERWORK III
Acrylics on canvas 2m x 1.5m
Kneeling down in professional diligence between abstractions, symbols of luck and prosperity.