More WHY walking thoughts I used a scroll that interrogates the landscape through the act of walking. The scroll functions as a temporal map, echoing the “cinematic” and sequential nature of movement through space. I allow the terrain to dictate the mark. Through indexical processes—including frottage (rubbing), blind embossment, and the suspension of local soil […]
In my reading on trains in Africa and artists who have used this narrative, I found Ibrahim Mahama, a Ghanaian-born artist. In the Artpil, 2025 (online publication) I read the following and also used their images: “Mahama’s exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien develops his research on the history of the Ghanaian railway network. Rails, Weight and […]
In 1778, in Port Louis, on the island then called Isle de France, a boy was born who would later be known only by the name of the place he came from — Louis van Mauritius. At three years old, he was put on a ship to the Cape as a child slave, sold on […]
(Part III of an anthology of writings about an installation with mixed media, called Walk the Line. This work is about place and, in part, about the discovered layers of history of a rural community in the Swartland area of South Africa.} What the land holds – Before the rails The weight of history Before […]
Fragments Anthology Part II (Unearthing the invisible histories of a rural Swartland community through mixed media and fragments. As the second part of this ongoing writing anthology, these texts gather what is recorded in local archives and trace how those quiet layers linger on the ground today.) A container that ventures outside the safety of […]
It seems I am getting to a place where I can say that making is meaning. My reading took me to an article (Materiality & Process: The Physical Act and Properties of Materials as Central Meaning in Contemporary Art-Making Francis Ankyiah1 , Frederick Bamfo). Here, the idea is to rethink artistic meaning, going beyond a […]
I am thinking about how the materials I work with create a starting point for reflections on memory, community, and my relationship with place, and how this then continues to present in the next making. When working with or in nature—whether creating nest shapes, hollow forms, drawings, or weavings—I find myself continually meditating on the […]
I want to explore a hybrid and fragmented form of writing about making Walk the Line. My conceptual thinking about walking is based on the idea of it becoming a vessel or bag that holds disparate things together along the way. I like how these things are all like a nest/weaving/contaier, as they look as […]
The scroll and the steel I. The Vessel My artistic practice connects with a decommissioned railway line that runs parallel to a dirt road at the entrance of the wheat and sheep farm where I live in the Swartland. This landscape places me roughly ninety kilometres Northeast of Cape Town. I set out to document […]
I ordered mulberry paper, which I hope is 100% Kozo, from China—the very same fibre known as Kozo in Japan and Hanji in Korea. Here is something incredibly grounding about knowing that the very same plant fibre I will be rubbing and massaging with water and muscle power has kept ancient ecosystems and crafts thriving […]