Learning to speak drew on the imaging, imagining and symbols of ‘nation’. It was concerned with taxonomy and nomenclature and the inevitable conflation of nature and culture that this embraced. It used plants as a metaphor for shifting definitions of indigenous and alien and made visual reference to museum display and the sepulchral. It also relied on the reconfiguration and recontextualisation of found texts. Text the flower pieces is taken from George Stow’s Native Races of Southern Africa, 1964.The funerary bouquets are presented on satin cushions screen-printed with some of the languages of Africa spoken outside of South Africa.

Group Exhibitions:

• Sasol Wax Competition. WAM Festival. Johannesburg. 2003
• Ball Sports. AVA. Cape Town. 2007.

About Indigenous

This work explores systems of ordering, and the binary oppositions and stategies of difference inherent within these systems. It is concerned with taxonomy and nomenclature and the inevitable conflation of nature and culture that this embraces. It uses plants as a metaphor for shifting definitions of indigenous and alien and makes visual reference to museum display and the sepulchral, relying on reconfiguration and recontextualisation of physical texts and other found objects to bring meaning to the series.

Test used in the flower piece is from George Stow’s Native Races of Southern Africa, 1964.The funerary bouquets are presented on satin cushions screen-printed with some of the many languages of Africa spoken outside of South African borders.

Wax has been used in the form of shoe polish on the wooden bases as well as the on the paper texts, which are waxed and transformed into the flower forms. The medium of wax is vital in the construction of meaning, as the wax implies sealing – a semi-permanence set in apposition to the permeability and transience of the paper flowers and their content.