Untitled (Anticipated Memory Series)

This is one of a series of drawings in the wool dust medium dated to the period around the time of my 2007 exhibition entitled Anticipated Memory. The exhibition opened a few months before I left South Africa for the UK, a time of painful separation, even as I also felt hugely liberated by the prospect of a completely different kind of life. My practice previously had addressed my connection to South Africa and now I wondered how it would be – and who I would be – away from the place to which I felt I belonged, a connection born from both the experiences of my lifetime and those of generations of my ancestors. 

Like this image, many of the drawings in this series were based on a fantasy of not being limited by place or distance. The flying object allowed me to be anywhere at any time without having to deal with painful separation. The flimsiness of the flying object – something like an inflatable plastic toy – was my acknowledgement that, despite my fantasy, with migration, whether or not it is chosen, one must always deal with the emotions associated with loss of a place and its people.

I first devised and employed this woollen dust on paper medium in 2004 and have developed it in my practice over a number of years in various ways. It remains for me primarily associated with the transient nature of all things, including my own existence.