Strauss & co - 15 February 2020, Cape Town

82 THE PROPERTY OF A COLLECTOR LOTS 53–74 65  DEBORAH BELL SOUTH AFRICAN 1957– Hieros Gamos 2008 signed and numbered 3/5 bronze height: 211cm R800 000 – 1 200 000 EXHIBITED Nirox Foundation, Johannesburg, Sources: Contemporary Sculpture in the Landscape , 25 March to 5 June 2009. Illlustrated on page 8 of the exhibition catalogue. Another example from the edition is in the Delaire Graaff Collection. “In both my painting and sculpture, I work between will and surrender, creation and destruction. I dream of the Zen mark, the single gesture of absolute presence that stands for the whole, but I never get it in one. My initial uninhabited mark may tempt me for a while, but it does not sustain. When I first started working with plaster, I was seduced by how it formed when throwing it and allowing it to drip. It was alive. I understood Giacometti, and was tempted to leave the work at that stage, yet something didn’t allow me to do that – it felt like imitation. So I started attacking the plaster with an angle grinder. Careful carving seemed too safe. I needed the impression of pushing against an unwieldy surface, of not being in control …The dance of finding beautiful form, but then allowing the gestural mark of accident to bring back a vitality, an imperfection.” 1 1. The artist in conversation with Mark Read (2015) cited in Deborah Bell: Dreams of Immortality; Blood and Gold , London: Circa|Everard-Read. Page 35.