Jane Alexander at the SANG
by Kerryn Greenberg
Frequently referred to as South Africa's most difficult and least definable artist, Jane Alexander's sculpting career began early in 1982. While still an undergraduate student at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, she won the National Fine Arts Student Competition and the Martienssen Student Prize. Since then she has received several major awards including, the Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 1995, and the FNB Vita Art Now Award in 1996. Most recently, in 2002 she was chosen by an international jury for the prestigious and highly coveted DaimlerChrysler Award, which aims to enhance the recipient's international reputation and artistic development.
Alexander's latest body of work on show at the SANG centres around Bom Boys, the work which won Alexander the DaimlerChrysler Award, and African Adventure, the artwork she has completed subsequently. These two major sculptural installations are framed by Alexander's most famous sculpture, the Butcher Boys, and a couple of smaller artworks.
Bom Boys consists of nine life-size 'boys' that have been cast from the same mould, standing in similar poses, arms gently extended, feet slightly apart, on a low grey surface made up of 36 squares, which could be a pavement or a gaming board. Their diminutive size makes it possible to think of these figures as abandoned, displaced, or orphaned children, or game pieces that one could control. It is not clear whether they are begging or about to move. Some of the figures are fully clothed, others are partially dressed and some are naked, most are exposed in some way. These 'boys' neither look at each other nor the viewer. The figures' faces are masked or obscured, but the smiling animal masks only partially hide unsmiling human mouths, the moist eyes revealing an innate sadness, the blindfolds speaking more of a disability than a playful game.
By extracting these eerily familiar figures from daily life and masking them - simultaneously obscuring and shaping their identities - Alexander achieves her trademark sense of ambiguity and alienation. The Bom Boys exist in a nowhere land, they are simultaneously victims and aggressors and evoke multiple responses of pity, curiosity, fear, shame, pathos, guilt, anxiety and sympathy. Certainly one cannot remain distant and ambivalent when viewing Bom Boys and this is possibly Alexander's greatest achievement in a world where we walk past 'faceless' children like this every day and feel little or nothing.
Alexander's exquisite and excruciating detail compels, invades, disturbs and complicates perceptions. This is certainly the case in African Adventure, which was originally conceived for the British Officers' Mess in the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town, the oldest building in South Africa. This installation consists of 10 large format and 15 small format photomontages and a video triptych all relating to an extensive group of sculptures created between 1999 and 2002. This is a multi-facetted, multi-media project, described by Alexander as "a confluence of related fragments" that is enigmatic and complex in its conceptualisation, techniques and structure.
An ochre-coloured sand box sets the stage for the sculptural installation. The enclosed space unifies diverse sculptures and enables the re-invention, repetition and transformation of familiar figures, which are then simultaneously depicted in the videos and photomontages. One of these component sculptures is Radiance of Faith: three fully dressed and masked figures reminiscent of the Bom Boys stand on wooden crates that once contained explosives and are marked dangerous. Reinvented, these figures evoke images of orators or evangelists.
The handless Girl with Gold and Diamonds and a thin-limbed, limp Doll with Industrial Strength Gloves are situated in front of Radiance of Faith. Settler, a monkey/man seated in a go-cart type car stares past Young Man, another Bom Boy-like figure. A dog and two small animals feature as 'familiars' in this bizarre tableau, until one notices that Harbinger 2 is in an impossible position with his front leg frozen backwards and his back leg forwards. The dog's skin is loosely draped over his back, either newly acquired or shedding, and the string tied around the animals' necks and legs allude to capture and escape.
The main protagonist, Pangaman carries a machete in his left hand and drags a multitude of well-used farming implements and toy farm vehicles, these tied to his waist. The participants in this adventure all look away from him. The use of organic materials such as soil and animal skin, along with well-used implements, toys, wooden boxes, fine fabrics, toy cars, etc� contributes to the multi-layered intertextual nature of Alexander's work.
African Adventure is completed with Harvester, seated beyond the installation boundary, distanced, lonely, and seemingly banished and Custodian atop a pedestal surveying the scene. In African Adventure the elements of a sparse and scattered world have been reassembled and the result is an unsettling scene suggestive of colonialism, Apartheid, and hierarchical relationships where aggression, violence, victimisation and subservience are features.
Through meticulously sculpted figures Alexander creates complex and multi-layered realities, which she then communicates with a combination of force and subtlety. Alexander's figures invade one's space, they simultaneously attract and repel, challenging the viewer to make sense of the encrypted messages. Alexander's work is patently artifice: each artwork begs interaction, yet eludes closure, easy interpretation and overall understanding. At best one can hope that their unrelenting presence and the overall confrontational and engaging experience leaves one examining oneself and considering the issues Alexander alludes to.
Once again Alexander can be commended, in the words of one of the DaimlerChrysler jurists, for giving "form to the fragility of a multi-cultural society."
Opens: April 26
Closes: July 27
South African National Gallery, Government Avenue, Company Gardens, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 481-3823 from 8:30am-1pm
Fax: (021) 461 0045
Email: ebedford@iziko.org.za
Website: www.museums.org.za/sang
Hours: Tues - Sun 10am - 5pm
Kerryn Greenberg is a student of Art Criticism, currently studying her Honours at the University of Cape Town.
Jane Alexander's DaimlerChrysler show has received much critical attention on ArtThrob. Here is a list of links to previous reviews:
Jane Alexander at the SANG by Sue Williamson
www.artthrob.co.za/03june/reviews/sang.html
Jane Alexander's 'African Adventure' - A New Perspective by Maren Ziese
Part One: http://www.artthrob.co.za/03may/reviews/sang.html
Part Two: www.artthrob.co.za/03may/reviews/sang2.html
Jane Alexander's Psychological Taxidermy by Kathryn Smith
www.artthrob.co.za/02dec/reviews/pam.html
