Archive: Issue No. 68, April 2003

Using the familiar, the everyday, the iconic, Wim Botha has succeeded in creating works characterised by their delicate blending of inter-acting themes. Take for instance his Wild Life series of sculptural installations. A relatively early piece from his career, Wim Botha used official government gazettes as source material for a carved bust of a Blue Wildebeest. As in much of the work that followed, the carved text of this piece became the physical substance of the work, the collective text informing both the representation of the work, as well as providing the work with its social context.

"My works are a process of distillations," the artist explains. "They attempt to reduce all-encompassing ideas and universal factors down to their core idea." Exploring along the way "intercepting variables" and "patterns", his work also offers viewers a curious glance at "the things people do, need, construct to make sense of things," be they grandiose and religious, or decorative and facile in a not so innocent fashion.

"Wim Botha's 'Transmigrations' sculptures are carved out of prison release papers and other documents that regulate human movement. A suspended, androgynous figure, hovering between growth and decay, confronts a Sable head mounted like a trophy, thus contrasting ideas of freedom and classification and evoking the spectre of death."
Paul Edmunds, ArtThrob, www.artthrob.co.za/02apr/reviews/kknk.html

Speaking about his working method, the artist has commented: "It is a very deliberate and conscious, even though it is instinctive. My working method is not mystical in any way. I enjoy the scientific aspect, and I am acutely aware of the associations and potentialities this suggests."

"In my work there is seldom a distinction to be drawn between the prominence of the concept and that of the medium. I work with materials central to mass consumerist applications, that are subsequently transformed in essence and meaning to a point at which material and concept becomes integrally interdependent. The works take the form of sculptural installations. I appropriate well-known, sometimes trite and over-saturated subject matter which, coupled with traditional shaping and technological elements, become the nucleus of a series of references around the inherent implication of the subject.

"The consistent conceptual element in my work is an attempt to simplify comprehensive principles and universal factors to their component base elements by means of a process of juxtaposed references. The works are distillations. The encompassing focal points of this process fall on universal human base instincts as manifested in all spheres of human activity. The elements create a discourse of reflexive and interpolating references around the central theme while avoiding direct or didactic commentary, leaving the subject without a final conclusion.

"In my paper works, I carve subjects from stacked or compressed documents containing selected texts with content and meaning significant to the work. By carving a form from these texts, the information it conveys becomes a part of the physical substance of the work and is directly related to the form."

And yet there is a lot that connects commune: onomatopoeia with Wim Botha's output to date. The lead frame windows, the circular wooden picture frames, the faux antiquity, the varied and refined details characteristic of Afrikaans pioneer homes, all these elements connect this work to Wim Botha's greater oeuvre, one that has shown as abiding interest in deconstructing the icons of the home, Afrikanerdom, and indeed South African life generally.

Despite some questionable contributions, both shows were favourably received, Wim's 'Grime' contribution included. (See ArtThrob's 'Grime' review: www.artthrob.co.za/02jul/reviews/grime.html.) The artist also proved himself to be remarkably resourceful. He single-handedly designed Clean/Grime, the exhibition catalogue and CD-Rom accompanying the two shows. The catalogue is a marvellous testament to the resourcefulness and enterprise of this emerging artist and his partner.

Unlike the Wildlife sculptures, however, works vaguely suggestive of early Jane Alexander sculptures (particularly the suspended figure), commune: suspension of disbelief seemed to arrive and present itself without peers. Concept and execution cohered seamlessly. And unlike the Blue Wildebeest bust of his Wildlife series, his Christ-like figure was not going to be easily commodified and turned into a pop d�cor piece, a rather lamentable fate that has befallen the artist's striking use of trophy mounts. (Popular d�cor stores in Johannesburg and Cape Town currently sell wire and paper trophy mounts that double up as lights. These decorative home artefacts speak little of the parochial colonial narrative of hunting referenced in Wim Botha's work but do at least offer resplendent examples of its post-colonial heritage.)

The first in the commune series, Wim Botha's Christ work boldly made known an ambitious enquiry, one that seeks to assess the shifting meanings of local and imported icons, whether secular or religious. At times this has required that the artist use unorthodox materials, such as bibles, to examine the abstract concepts represented. In the artist's own words: "It is the challenge of taking an image that is so assimilated into the communal psyche, taking that image and presenting something that takes you completely by surprise, catches you off guard."