Prints

The linocut prints from my 1998 exhibition Journey invite you to open your imagination and travel into the realm of storytelling. The images exhibited are like “markings on the way”. Journey originally meant “the work of a day”, it is more generally understood today as movement – travel from one point to another.  It is in this sense all the artworks shown, prints or carvings, image a “journey”, tell a story. Story telling is about life, dreams, desires, hopes, despairs and tragedies, about the journey of life we are all on.

Let me tell you a story: “Truth went along the streets entirely naked, as the day she was born.  Nobody wanted to welcome her into their homes.  After having met her, everyone would rush off in panic.  So day after day Truth exiled from everyday life wandered along the streets in a gloomy and bitter mood.  But one day she met Fairy Tale.  Fairy Tale was dressed in a very attractive, funky, colourful manner.   She asked Truth, “Tell me, friend, why are you so gloomy and bitter?”

“Well, I’m fed up” answered Truth, “I’m quite old and advanced in years, and people won’t accept me.  they don’t even want to get to know me”

“It’s not because you are old,” said Fairy Tale.  “People do not like you.  Look at me.  I am very old, but the older I get the more people like me.  I’ll tell you a secret.  Men and women want things a little bit embellished and a little bit in disguise.  I’ll lend you some of my clothes, and you’ll see that with them on, you’ll be welcome everywhere.”  Truth followed Fairy Tale’s advice, and dressed in some of her clothes.  Since then Truth and Fairy Tale have been travelling together, and people, like you and me, listen to both of them all the time.

Story-telling is one of the ways we can make contact with the spirits of the ancestors.  Africa has a rich heritage of stories.  This exhibition invites you to reclaim and celebrate the joy of stories in our life’s journey.