Bird

Flying, the way I feel about it, is for the birds. I am convinced that the engines will fall off, the wings will snap or the plane will be bombed. In any event I am certain it will fall out of the sky. I am afraid of flying and by the time you read this letter I will have winged my way to Australia.

I understand the scientific explanation for how an aeroplane gets into the sky and whilst that may be logical, rational and reasonable, I feel that it is impossible. Modern aeroplanes are heavy and I have heard the figure of 160 tons and more mentioned. I refuse to believe that such a large and heavy thing can be airborne and think it should be moored alongside the quay with seagulls flying around it.

Perhaps my fears of flight or my admiration for birds have prompted my recent images of ‘Bird in Flight’ (sold) and ‘Swoop’ (now at the Gallery on the Square). I never make animal sculptures or bird sculptures from an ornithological or zoological point of view. I do not attend to the anatomical details enough for that, I am more concerned with the formal construction and even make distortions for my own sculptural ends. My birds, being made of dense heavy wood, will most certainly plummet to earth if they were propelled into the air. However, I hope my birds give the feeling of lightness, movement, flow of air, featheredness and all that make you think that they could flit, fly, swoop and stoop. ‘Urban Gorilla’ is rooted in the fears and disappointments of living in South Africa: Fat cat criminals, mismanagement of parastatals, violent xenophobic behaviour, and other torments. I am generally a positive person with faith in South Africa but sometimes the bad news just comes too thick and fast and then I too have my doubts. This work reminds me of the film ‘Once were Warriors’ about an alcoholic and dysfunctional Maori family. The title of the film could have been another title for this work.

However there is a comic side to it as the figure is short, fat, clumsy, distorted, beady eyed and is overexerting himself. I guess it focuses on the misguided and idiotic behaviour and pompous self importance of people who have made a mess of things and the almost invariable and inevitable portliness of government officials and crooks that are so often one and the same thing.

This sculpture is made from the azalea bush root system. They are perhaps the closest I can get to the expressiveness of the thick impasto painting by the likes of the painters William de Koning and Leon Kossoff. I love the medium, not only does it have a fine dense wood but more importantly, there is a randomness and complexity of root forms, contrasts of light wood and dark spaces and linearity of roots that draw a sort of fake anatomy and give the feeling of a flayed body to the figure.

This, for me, expresses something of the rawness, fragmentation and confusion of feelings I have living in South Africa. Fear and hope, excitement and despair, opportunity and desperation are a few of those feelings that I experience on a regular basis. This work is a Yeti of Gauteng, an Abominable Hillcrest man or a Wild man of the bush futilely brandishing himself in defence against the intolerable unseen forces which are everywhere and nowhere.

In that respect I am going to enjoy Australia as it will be a change and a respite from the onslaught of bad news. I will leave behind the electricity saboteurs, third force xenophobes, still active agents of apartheid and all those that took responsibility for the various problems or crimes and resigned. Of course, Australia has its own share of problems. Although I am not well informed, I hear that the kangaroos are on the Australian mafia hit list and the gulls are bait thieves! Whatever their problems are I will view them from a distance and at least it will be a change.

I now only have to deal with the stress of flying there. If I could have sailed my sea sickness would only have lasted for about a week and I could have admired the seagulls flying overhead along the way. The nightmares about flying have been with me for three weeks, I have died a dozen times and I have yet to make the trip. However, I do have to make that flight as I have serious business to do in Australia and I do not have the time to sail there.

In case you were thinking it, I am not emigrating, I am going to see my brother and provided the gulls leave me some bait the important business I will be doing, is fishing with him.