'A History of Failure'
Chad Rossouw at BrundynTo study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. It is a very serious task, young man, and possibly a tragic one.
– Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game (1943)
'A History of Failure' uses South Africa’s past to examine both the complex nature of history and of South African identity. Using a variety of media, including lithographs, sculpture and found objects, Rossouw shows moments of melancholy, bathos and bombastic failure against the relentless march of historical time. Two main ideas connect the various artworks in 'A History of Failure'. The first is that historical progress is merely an illusion. The second proposes an inherent failing in projects, monuments or nations that are dependent on the illusion of history.
The Union of South Africa, for example, presents a railway (a symbol of progress and imperial ownership of land) spiraling to the ceiling with a model train teetering on the brink of disaster. Other works, such as The De La Rey, invent fictional histories, in this case the development and destruction of a South African Zeppelin in the 1930s. Here history is a tale told from mutable evidence.
20 March - 02 May













