Abstract

Forty years ago this letter would have served to remind you that you had forgotten to put ten rand in an envelope with a birthday card for me. However, ten rand does not buy what it used to and that was before the Post Office started confiscating any money sent in the post. Besides, now that I am a grown up, it seems, regrettably, that I am restricted to socks and underpants as acceptable presents.

If it were not for its continued monopoly and a few rand still in my Post Office Bank account I imagine the Post Office would cease to exist. I write emails and I imagine almost everyone else does even if they, like the snail mail, are not always delivered. Some things never change. Julius Malema reminds me of P.W. Botha waving his finger and telling the press how to behave. The tyre burning and police shooting at those who riot are indistinguishable from the images that I saw in the press in the Apartheid era. Perhaps, the more things change the more they remain the same.

Shoot the Messenger made in wild plum wood could have been an Apartheid era subject. In 1980’s, when I went to Rhodes and P.W. Botha was in power, I preferred not to read newspapers. However, my journalist friends made me aware of their frustrations and the press’s prescriptions and limitations. They were disabled and could not give the full story. This work is pertinent to threats to a free press and does have something of the horror and angst of that apartheid era. Specifically, the photographs of “terrorists” shot in the head that I was shown at that time. Those images are now part of the arsenal of this artist who conveys the concerns of this new era, or as some like to call it “the new regime”.

Ghost is part of my new regime which is much the same as the old one. Except mine has taken to heart all the lessons learnt from all I have done since the eighties. It has been made with more knowledge, more skill, and more determination than before. I think that this work achieves many things I strive to attain. It is a composition that is both organic and structured, a sort of ordered chaos. It has an exciting texture, surface, line and form. I don’t know the name of this wood but I have previously worked with it and know it as “good wood” with an unusual colour and fantastic grain. The shape of this work and its striations reminds me of Roy Lichtenstein’s “brushstroke” works, some of which he made in the bad old eighties.

There are a few things from bad old days I would like to re-instate like the ten rand that my granny used to send on my birthdays. I think it should be enough to buy me one of those big black Wilson’s toffees which would be better than socks or underpants. There are a lot of things that make me happy in our brave new world. I love email as you do not have to wait two weeks for a reply. The web is great for research and if you are looking for a different opinion you can read a newspaper from almost anywhere in the world. The spelling and grammar checks on my computer are great for writing as I can neither spell nor read my own hand writing.

As if to illustrate the benefits of our new world I have recently sold a work that is going to a gallery in China and had an email from a gallery in London interested in my work. In the bad old days sending work to China would have been consorting with the communist enemy and, being poor, I would have had to give it to them. In those days Maggie Thatcher’s London was capitalist and it was a time of economic ascendance for the British. Now, the Chinese are our financially well off, almost capitalist, friends, whilst our poor, almost communist, friends in London have been hard hit by the recession and are concerned about the prices of my work.

It is not that I am a supporter of either Maggie or Mao but at least in those days I still had friends and my birthday was remembered. This year I only received one birthday card which was from my Mum. I had to remind my wife and children of the important event and by then it was too late for the usual socks and underpants and even if you sent it, there was no ten rand in the post.

Regards
Carl