Magic Lantern Project

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Given the focus of The Magic Lantern project, I have interpreted the ‘absent referent’ as the land – that is, the earth, the soil beneath our feet and collective awareness of it as a living organism. In the ZAH collection of slides, the land, with its diversity of people, flora and fauna, presents as an investment pawn, thus silencing its power and our (as people) interconnectedness with it.

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In this collection of slides, I was drawn to those depicting various City Halls across South Africa - including the Pietermaritzburg City Hall - constructed in a Victorian architectural vernacular, which speaks of the unabashed colonial values of the time. In these relatively unpeopled slides, and with reference to David Gush’s current MA research - which explores the appropriation of space, especially where building materials are used as art-making media – the City Hall buildings seem to assert ownership over the land and people.

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Given the strong conceptual basis of the Magic Lantern project, I aimed to make images that embrace both this conceptual rationale and also function in a nonliteral manner. Central to my artistic practice is mark-making, which stems from drawing from observation, memory, and imagination. So I chose slides for their narrative content as well as their mark-making potential.

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In experimenting with a solvent release process, I used photocopied images taken from the ZAH collection and photocopies of photographs I took of the Pietermaritzburg City Hall. The solvent release registration of a City Hall in the small drawing on watercolour paper didn’t take, but I loved the amorphous grey smudge it left, which I used as integral to further drawing.

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In keeping with my recent work, these landscape drawings adopt a transverse section perspective, which implicitly calls for a partially imaginary construction. In the fourth image, I playfully used round head paper fasteners to join the separate sections of the drawing and to explore my somatic response of misalignment and instability to the idea that complex interconnected beings can conceivably be traded as transactional pawns.