Strauss & co - 10 October 2016, Cape Town

541 VARIOUS ARTISTS SOUTH AFRICAN 2 0 TH CENTURY BURR: Print and Purpose excecuted in 2016 etching image size: 19 by 19cm; paper size: 39 by 39cm each signed and numbered 1/10 in pencil in the margin R30 000–50 000 The AVA/Strauss & Co Portfolio 2016 features drypoint etchings by eight artists, including: Bridget Baker, Lien Botha, Georgina Gratrix, Randy Hartzenberg, Bonolo Kavula, Vulindlela Nyoni, Andrew Putter, Mandla Vanyaza, and a poem by Karin Schimke. The curators were Eunice Geustyn and Melvyn Minnaar and the portfolio was produced by Alma Vorster at the Ruth Prowse School of Art. A limited edition of ten portfolio boxes and three artist’s proofs were produced, the current lot being the first of the edition. About Burr Print & Purpose: Printmaking has a unique presence and history in South Africa. For this first AVA portfolio, artists working in various media were invited to rekindle the tactile power of the hands-on creative craft of print in an era of media and communication overload. The theme is print itself, for which ‘burr’acts as metaphor. Artists were challenged to consider the power and effect of constructing a printed image on paper; to develop a visual signal of purpose and passion; create a portfolio of presence for our time. Strauss & Co has supported the Association for Visual Arts to promote the fine art of printmaking. The proceeds from the sale of this lot will benefit the Association for Visual Arts’ArtReach fund. Bridget Baker (1971- ) “The image in the drypoint etching that which is lost is not buried in the ground is like a jumbled-up sentence, or an extended footnote, disrupting the linearity of a narrative. When preparing, I photographed close-up images of a Persian carpet under the dining room table in my mother’s house. I had been staying there for long periods while preparing to return to live in South Africa. The often estranging and anxious experiences of a nomadic life becomes more punctuated when surrounded with familial objects from one's childhood. Overlaying these close-up images by dry scratching and hatching, I wanted to create an inexplicable hovering moment where the readable image is disrupted. The title too is treated as a footnote. It’s a manipulated quote from the memoir of a British Settler ancestor who buried the family silver near present-day Port Alfred during the War of the Axe. He returned a while later, but forgot where he dug the hole.” Lien Botha (1961- ) “How to draw a polar bear (for burr) is implied by the sharp incision of ice at the edge of extinction.” then why look, she said, it’s binary code: black and white, all made and remade from the vaults of nought & the arrows of one. her eyes were stripes against the sun, her mouth an o. we make, that’s all. the pen the brush the drill the wood the tool the trowel, your hand - stippling the edges of nought containing a filigree of night-framed thought swaying the lines scratching the edge toothing some surface holding the strain straining the end curving what’s plain. i said: my head is sore. she said: halo-ache, ah! hail the burr the coronet the fuzzy crown the blister the weal it hurts, i said. here, she said, pouring ink into my palm. it’s medicine. ©Karin Schimke 214