Strauss & co - 15 February 2020, Cape Town

49  JANE ALEXANDER SOUTH AFRICAN 1959– Harbinger in Correctional Uniform, Lost Marsh signed, dated 2007, inscribed with the title and numbered 18/60 on the reverse digital print with pigment on cotton paper image size: 30 by 40cm; sheet size: 46 by 56cm R20 000 – 30 000 LITERATURE Pep Subirós (ed.) (2011) Jane Alexander Surveys (from the Cape of Good Hope) , Museum for African Art, New York, and Actar, Barcelona. Illustrated in colour on page 158. This figure of Harbinger (2004/2006) appears in a number of sculptural installations, tableaux and photomontage by Jane Alexander, sometimes differently clothed or naked with “protective boots”. Photomontage has always been used by the artist as a means to elaborate on particular figures, and/ or to contextualise them beyond sculptural presentations. In this work, the harbinger wears a pre-democracy South African prison uniform and shackles, standing in farmland, with the figure of an earlier Harbinger in the foreground (part of African Adventure 1999-2002), and Beast 2003 in the background. The location is an ecologically threatened wetland and estuary on the South African west coast. 64