Kruger Rand turns 50
The Kruger rand turns 50 in 2017. To mark this 6 artists have been commissioned to make an art work for a Money Fair in Berlin later this year. I was fortunate to be one of the selected artists.
Each artist has been given a topic, each topic a remarkable event which occurred during the past 50 years. The topic given to me was the tearing down of the Berlin wall. Each art work will be installed in a niche as in the diagram above.
I want to make yarn by tearing [up] the wall, and knit an art work out of this yarn which embodies the craziness which created the wall, the process of removing [unpicking] those socio/political structures and the new spaces that have been created.
My starting point was to photograph a segment of the Berlin wall which stands as a monument in St Georges Mall, in the centre of Cape Town, where I am based.
This segment was given to Cape Town as a monument to mark the state visit of President Mandela, to Berlin in 1996.
Both the front and the back of the segment of the wall has been photographed. The limitations of the commission were to create something to fit within a series of display niches 1768 mm high, 700 mm wide and 200 mm deep. It turns out that the proportions of the segment of the wall matched these dimensions! The final print was just under 4000 mm.
I applied a graded blue ink wash to the reverse side of the print. The grading followed the grain of the paper which runs length-wise.
Stitching the paper.
Tearing up the Berlin wall and developing a ball of yarn.
Knitting begins.
The final piece, with the remains of the ball of yarn still attached.
TITLE: The Sky Over Berlin [Unpicking
the Berlin Wall]
DIMENSIONS: 700 mm x 1768 mm
MATTER: Archival print of a segment of
the Berlin which was given to the City of Cape Town as a monument to mark the
state visit of President Mandela to Berlin in 1996, ink, polyester sewing
thread
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