Welgemeend August Art Month - 2019

59 “Look again at Figures on a Beach – this blandly titled, large series of canvases reveal contested, separated spaces with imposing figures either in confrontation or rather more intimate relation to one another, which require of the viewer to guess at the notion behind this caption, and wonder at a beach scene with no sea visible. Made at a time when controversies still raged in the “new” South Africa, there are serious issues about access to beaches and more humorously, nude beaches in Cape Town, which interested Hodgins at the time he was preparing works for the Cape exhibition where this work was shown.” Neil Dundas