Goodman Gallery presents 'Promise Land', the first solo show by artist/sculptor Stuart Bird. In a series of meticulously and often obsessively hand-crafted sculptures and installations, Bird explores the position of the artist and the individual in contemporary South Africa.

South Africa is the land of promise of the title – a country full of exciting dynamism, but, conversely a potentially dangerous and fraught land. The title also alludes to the promised land of Canaan in the Hebrew bible – a mythical place of abundance that was never quite realized. Over the Rainbow, a glittering arch constructed out of broken shards of mirror, is both a welcome and a warning – a reminder that the place to which it grants access remains a fantasy that can be visited but never inhabited. In Change, a floor sculpture spelling out the word 'struggle' in hand-carved African mahogany, coins are imbedded in the wood like bullet-holes; a violent symbol of an economic struggle barely begun.

The presence of the artist is central to the exhibition: the careful, painstaking carving of each letter and shape from a block of raw wood, and the slow and repetitive sanding and polishing of each layer and surface can be read as a kind of ritual, or perhaps an atonement – a process of coming to terms with the status quo, combining with a central desire to create a coherent object of beauty.

'Promise Land' is also about a personal struggle – a process of working through and coming to terms with the country's legacy of conflict and violence, an inheritance that we have no choice but to live with.

19 January - 25 February