tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/fine-arts-30358/articlesFine arts – The Conversation2021-08-09T04:52:10Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1647132021-08-09T04:52:10Z2021-08-09T04:52:10ZArt, drama and music lower stress. Here’s what you need to know if you’re thinking of taking arts in years 11 and 12<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415136/original/file-20210809-17-wg6eas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/school-art-college-arts-education-group-1486701911">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/senior-subjects-series-107516">series</a> providing school students with evidence-based advice for choosing subjects in their senior years.</em></p>
<p>If you’re thinking of taking a performing or visual arts subject in years 11 and 12, you are probably weighing up a few considerations. These may include your passion and interest in the subject, how doing one or two arts subjects might affect your entry into university and what you could do with the skills you learn.</p>
<p>Nearly 30% of all <a href="https://www.acara.edu.au/reporting/national-report-on-schooling-in-australia/national-report-on-schooling-in-australia-data-portal/year-12-subject-enrolments#datase">year 12 students across Australia</a> (53,311 year 12 students in total) chose to study visual or performing arts in year 12 in 2019. But twice as many girls took an arts subject (40%) as boys (18%).</p>
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<p>The arts subject selection you have will depend on what state you live in. But these are the types of subjects you can broadly choose from in visual and performing arts.</p>
<h2>Visual arts</h2>
<p><a href="https://vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/vce/art/ArtSD-2017.pdf">Visual arts</a> is a theory-based subject. You will learn about different artworks and the role of artists in society. You will engage in discussions and writing tasks about what artworks mean. This includes ideas from historical and contemporary arts and culture. </p>
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<p>In <a href="https://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/curriculum/vce/vce-study-designs/studioarts/Pages/Index.aspx">studio arts</a>, you will learn about artists’ practices and the art industry while also developing your own art. </p>
<p>You will experiment with techniques and art processes in the mediums of your choice. These include photography, painting, drawing, printmaking, film, digital arts, ceramics or textiles. You will develop your own artworks, document this process and exhibit your work.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415139/original/file-20210809-16-mez1ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Young man holding camera." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415139/original/file-20210809-16-mez1ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415139/original/file-20210809-16-mez1ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415139/original/file-20210809-16-mez1ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415139/original/file-20210809-16-mez1ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415139/original/file-20210809-16-mez1ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415139/original/file-20210809-16-mez1ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415139/original/file-20210809-16-mez1ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">In studio arts, you can work in a media form of your choice, including photography.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/school-art-college-arts-education-group-1486701911">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/vce/media/MediaSD_2018.pdf">Media arts</a> involves researching and learning about narrative across different media forms. You will demonstrate your understanding of production processes by designing a media product (such as a film or photographic exhibition) and presenting it.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/curriculum/vce/vce-study-designs/productdesign-and-technology/Pages/Index.aspx">Product design and technology</a> involves learning about, and experimenting with, materials and processes. The materials will vary from school to school, but you may be able to choose from wood or timber, metal, fabrics, polymers, glass or ceramics. You will learn how to design and put these designs into production. </p>
<h2>Performing arts</h2>
<p><a href="https://senior-secondary.scsa.wa.edu.au/syllabus-and-support-materials/arts/dance">Dance</a> will teach you about dance traditions, styles and works from different cultures. You will learn about music theatre, the work of tap or jazz or street performers, ballet and modern dance, and choreography. As you learn this content through theory and practice, you will engage in analysis of dance that will help you develop your own choreographed performance with others. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.sace.sa.edu.au/web/drama">Drama</a> involves studying practice and theory to understand the ways theatre and performance can communicate stories and ideas. You will explore different traditions of drama including costume, set design and lighting, make-up, masks, props and puppetry and sound design. You will ultimately create, develop and present a solo performance.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415147/original/file-20210809-20-jh2w7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Girl playing guitar." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415147/original/file-20210809-20-jh2w7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415147/original/file-20210809-20-jh2w7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415147/original/file-20210809-20-jh2w7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415147/original/file-20210809-20-jh2w7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415147/original/file-20210809-20-jh2w7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415147/original/file-20210809-20-jh2w7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415147/original/file-20210809-20-jh2w7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">In music, you will learn through listening, performing and composing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-girls-hands-playing-guitar-against-140070883">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Documents/vce/music/2017MusicSD.pdf">Music</a> has different pathways depending on what state you live in. In the Victorian curriculum, there are three pathways culminating in units 3 and 4 of music investigation and music performance. These pathways require at least four years’ experience in learning an instrument. Another pathway, <a href="https://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/curriculum/vet/vce-vet-programs/Pages/musicindustry.aspx">VET music industry</a>, focuses on performing in public.</p>
<p>While each pathway and qualification is different, you will learn through listening, performing and composing. You will apply creative thinking skills to analyse and critique contemporary and historical music and musicians. </p>
<h2>What benefits will I get through studying arts?</h2>
<p>From my research and practice as an artist and university educator of 15 years, I know any of the year 11 and 12 art subjects will enable you to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1871187117301694">learn from extensive creative processes</a>. Developing a set of paintings will require experimenting with techniques, learning from other artists, developing a theme or message to convey, and ensuring the subject matter in your paintings is suitable for conveying the message and appropriate for the style you are working in.</p>
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<p>Your technique must be proficient to achieve good marks. You also need to document the development of your research and ideas with visual images you created and written statements in journals. This is somewhat risky as you are putting yourself out there. It must also come together in a certain time frame, which can be challenging and stressful. </p>
<p>But it will pay off as research shows <a href="https://www.artsedsearch.org/study/arts-education-in-secondary-schools-effects-and-effectiveness/">arts education has</a> many benefits. </p>
<p>Beyond technical knowledge and skills, benefits include actual enjoyment and stress relief. The senior years can be stressful years, so adding an arts subject to the mix can actually be a way to take care of yourself. It is well documented the arts offer <a href="http://www.artshealthandwellbeing.org.uk/appg-inquiry/">mental health benefits</a> as the focus on creating art is a form of mindfulness. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415149/original/file-20210809-28-1tim6q4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Students doing improvisation in drama class, wearing all black." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415149/original/file-20210809-28-1tim6q4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415149/original/file-20210809-28-1tim6q4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415149/original/file-20210809-28-1tim6q4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415149/original/file-20210809-28-1tim6q4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415149/original/file-20210809-28-1tim6q4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415149/original/file-20210809-28-1tim6q4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415149/original/file-20210809-28-1tim6q4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Theatre and other arts can be a great form of stress relief.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/male-female-drama-students-performing-arts-1336613192">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Creating art is a process of focusing on bringing together subject matter, technique and creative experience to communicate a story or an idea. The ability to express your feelings through the arts is a <a href="https://cv.vic.gov.au/media/2807/making-sense-art-and-mental-health-educationkit.pdf">form of release</a>. And reflecting on its meaning can provide insights into your self, which is therapeutic.</p>
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<p>In addition, you will develop a range of skills that will help you in any area of life. Beyond creativity and thinking skills, <a href="https://www.artsedsearch.org/study/arts-education-in-secondary-schools-effects-and-effectiveness/">research shows</a> arts education will help you enhance your communication and expressive skills, as well as boosting your confidence and self-esteem. Teamwork, too, is a big part of the arts, and learning this skill will be helpful at university and in your future employment.</p>
<p>The presentation, communication and performance skills you learn are adaptable for public speaking, community and public art careers, as well as teaching. </p>
<h2>Will doing the arts bring down my ATAR?</h2>
<p>The ATAR is a university-based system that determines how many students will get into particular courses. Like a queue, it ranks you against everyone in the year 12 age group. </p>
<p>But university entry, particularly when it comes to the arts, doesn’t rely on ATAR. It often requires an <a href="https://www.rmit.edu.au/study-with-us/levels-of-study/undergraduate-study/bachelor-degrees/bachelor-of-arts-fine-art-bp201#admissions">interview process with presentation of a portfolio</a>. </p>
<p>If you’re not looking to do arts at university, it’s still important to choose senior subjects you are interested in and good at. Plus, skills you learn in the arts can enhance your entry prospects. For instance, entry into a medical degree requires a high ATAR. But most <a href="https://www.monash.edu/medicine/som/direct-entry/domestic">universities also conduct an interview</a> to test your empathy, collaboration and ethical reasoning skills – all of which are enhanced by the arts.</p>
<h2>What will I do with these skills after school?</h2>
<p>Many students who study senior art go on to study the visual and/or performing arts at university. Some become self-employed artists. Others practise art on the side and that helps them maintain a good balance in life.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415153/original/file-20210809-25-lc3rde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman's hands making pottery." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415153/original/file-20210809-25-lc3rde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415153/original/file-20210809-25-lc3rde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415153/original/file-20210809-25-lc3rde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415153/original/file-20210809-25-lc3rde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415153/original/file-20210809-25-lc3rde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415153/original/file-20210809-25-lc3rde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415153/original/file-20210809-25-lc3rde.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Many people continue to practise art on the side of their full-time job, to help create a healthy life balance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/woman-hands-working-on-pottery-wheel-1377692564">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>One ex-student, now in her late 20s, studied visual art and music in school but is now a psychiatric nurse who is also in a band. She said being a musician helps her cope with the stresses of her job. </p>
<p>Another ex-student, a 20-year-old male, studied the VCE VET in music industry as well as media arts, studio arts, visual arts, psychology and literature. He is a full-time intern in a technology company. He said the networking he does now is very close to what he had to do for the documentary he made in media arts. He also said his creative skills were helpful in the marketing material he designs.</p>
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<p>You have to be a creative strategist to get people to give you time of day in sales and marketing.</p>
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<p><em>Read the other articles in our series on choosing senior subjects, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/senior-subjects-series-107516">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164713/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shelley Hannigan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Beyond creativity and thinking skills, arts education will help you enhance your communication and expressive skills, as well as boosting your confidence and self-esteem.Shelley Hannigan, Senior Lecturer in Art Education, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1153852019-04-18T09:22:05Z2019-04-18T09:22:05ZTribute to biggest collection of artists’ books in the southern hemisphere<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269536/original/file-20190416-147518-9qwwua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Witkrans' by Ena Carsten (1998), on exhibition at Wits Art Museum, 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Charles Leonard</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>There is a very special section of artworks known as artists’ books. These are artworks in the form of books rather than books about art. South African art collector and philanthropist Jack Ginsberg began collecting in this field in the early 1970s. He recently donated this world-renowned collection – and the biggest in the southern hemisphere – to Wits Art Museum in Johannesburg. Part of the collection, which includes more than 3 000 artworks plus thousands of additional items related to the field of book arts, is on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/WitsArtMuseum/">exhibition</a>. The Conversation Africa’s Charles Leonard spoke to David Paton, co-curator of the exhibition.</em></p>
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<p><strong>How would you describe artists’ books?</strong></p>
<p>Artists’ books are artworks in the form of books that explore and unpack their own material being; their <em>bookness</em>. In other words, artists’ books are self-conscious about their function, drawing attention to, as book artist and scholar Johanna Drucker states in <a href="https://www.granarybooks.com/books/drucker2/drucker2.html"><em>The Century of Artists’ Books</em></a>, the very conventions by which books normally efface their identity.</p>
<p>This reflexive awareness includes a book’s material, shape, structure and navigability. Thus, artists’ books are not sketchbooks, journals or portfolios and certainly not books about, or on, artists. Conventional notions of artists’ books usually include only objects that function as books and exclude sculptural objects, book-like objects, digital books and ephemera. </p>
<p><strong>Give us a brief history of artists’ books.</strong></p>
<p>The rise of artists’ books is a phenomenon of the 1960s and ‘70s in the US. It began with the democratic photographic multiples of Ed Ruscha such as <em><a href="http://www.theartistsbook.org.za/view.asp?pg=booknesses&pgsub=jgcat&pgsub1=books&pgsub2=0033">Twentysix Gasoline Stations</a></em> (1962) and <em><a href="http://blogs.getty.edu/pacificstandardtime/explore-the-era/worksofart/every-building-on-the-sunset-strip/">Every Building on the Sunset Strip</a></em> (1966). </p>
<p>Another maker of artists’ books at this time in Europe was German-Swiss conceptual artist <a href="http://www.artnet.com/artists/dieter-roth/">Dieter Roth</a>. </p>
<p>Before this, however, is a rich history of book arts which includes <em>Livres d'Artistes</em> which are fine, limited-edition books incorporating illustrations of famous texts or poems. An example is Henri Matisse’s etchings which accompany <em><a href="http://www.henri-matisse.net/poetry_french.html">Poésies de Stéphane Mallarmé</a></em> and published in 1932. </p>
<p>Before this are the Futurist and Russian Constructivist books by, for example, <a href="http://www.theartistsbook.org.za/view.asp?pg=booknesses&pgsub=jgcat&pgsub1=books&pgsub2=0008">El Lissitzky</a> and <a href="http://www.theartistsbook.org.za/view.asp?pg=booknesses&pgsub=jgcat&pgsub1=books&pgsub2=0035">Ilia Zdanevich (Iliazd)</a>. Perhaps the most famous early artists’ book is Sonia Delaunay and Blaise Cendrars’s <em><a href="http://www.theartistsbook.org.za/view.asp?pg=booknesses&pgsub=jgcat&pgsub1=books&pgsub2=0001">Prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France</a></em> (1913) considered by many to be the first example of simultaneity in art. </p>
<p>In South Africa, perhaps the earliest exemplars are Phil du Plessis’s <em>“<a href="http://www.theartistsbook.org.za/view_collod.asp?pg=collod_item&collod_opt=item&ItemID=135">Hulde Uit 1970</a>”</em>, an irreverent addendum to the journal Wurm 12 (1970) and Walter Battiss’s <em><a href="http://www.theartistsbook.org.za/view_collod.asp?pg=collod_item&collod_opt=item&ItemID=709">Male Fook Book</a></em> (begun in 1973).</p>
<p><strong>Who is Jack Ginsberg?</strong></p>
<p>Jack is an accountant by profession but is known for his philanthropic work and support of the arts in South Africa. His collection of artworks by Walter Battiss formed the majority of the 700 pieces on the exhibition “Walter Battiss: I Invented Myself” held at the Wits Art Museum in 2016. </p>
<p>Jack then donated the works to Wits Art Museum’s permanent holdings which now forms the nucleus of a major Battiss Archive. In 2017, a small portion of Jack’s internationally renowned collection of artists’ books was showcased at the “<a href="http://www.theartistsbook.org.za/view.asp?pg=booknesses&pgsub=jgcat&pgsub1=">Booknesses: Artists’ Books from the Jack Ginsberg Collection</a>”
exhibition at the University of Johannesburg Art Gallery. </p>
<p>Despite this being only a small proportion of his collection, they constituted one of the largest exhibitions of artists’ books held globally. Jack is the director of The Ampersand Foundation a non-profit charitable trust. It supports residencies by South African artists and others working in the arts at the foundation’s apartment in New York. </p>
<p>The Foundation also supports local artists by buying their artworks and donating them to museums and galleries.</p>
<p><strong>Describe the works he donated to Wits Art Museum?</strong></p>
<p>Jack has been collecting artists’ books as well as books on the field, what he calls “the archive on artists’ books” since the 1970s. In 2014 he was one of 10 international collectors of artists’ books (and one of only three from outside of the US) invited to participate in <em><a href="https://centerforbookarts.org/event/behind-the-personal-library-collectors-creating-the-canon/">Behind the Personal Library: Collectors Creating the Canon</a></em> at the Centre for Book Art, New York. </p>
<p>The Wits Art Museum collection is the envy of private collectors, scholars, museums and academic collections globally. It consists of some of the cannon of international exemplars as well as contemporary work from North and South America, Europe, Russia and Asia, Australasia and Africa. </p>
<p>It is also the only collection of South African artists’ books anywhere in the world as Jack has, single-handedly, promoted and supported the book arts in this country. Books that Jack has donated to the Wits Art Museum include most of those mentioned in the “history of artists’ books”. It includes Kara Walker’s remarkable paper engineered <em><a href="http://www.theartistsbook.org.za/view.asp?pg=booknesses&pgsub=jgcat&pgsub1=books&pgsub2=0179">Freedom, a Fable</a></em> as well as books by African artists such as <a href="http://www.theartistsbook.org.za/view.asp?pg=booknesses&pgsub=jgcat&pgsub1=books&pgsub2=0150">Atta Kwami</a> and <a href="http://artsandubuntutrust.org/news/our-dear-friend-wonga-mancoba-passed-away-in-paris-on-12-february-2015/">Marc Wonga Mancoba</a>. </p>
<p>Jack’s extensive collection also comprises fascinating categories such as popular culture; fine bindings; presses and publishers; ephemera, theses and catalogues along with books with unusual materials (such as glass, cork and metal) and structures (such as pop-up and down and tunnel books).</p>
<p><strong>What’s the significance of the donation?</strong></p>
<p>Jack’s collection of artists’ books and, importantly, his archive, is considered by many to be one of the most comprehensive and accessible collections of materials devoted to the field of the book arts anywhere in the world. Together they constitute some 8 500 items donated to the university. </p>
<p>Making these items publicly available at Wits Art Museum as well as the opportunities for artists, designers and scholars to view and access these bookworks, objects and archival materials is an exciting, unique and timely gift to the South African art world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115385/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Paton receives funding from DHET for textual research outputs in accredited journals and from the Faculty and University Research Committees of the University of Johannesburg. </span></em></p>A new donation of artists’ books to a South African art gallery constitutes one of the largest exhibitions of artists’ books held globally.David Paton, Senior Lecturer in Visual Art, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/775592017-05-23T06:33:16Z2017-05-23T06:33:16ZThe ‘digital handmade’: how 3D printing became a new craft technology<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170243/original/file-20170521-12257-dxltwl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">3D printing can be a powerful tool for designers and artists.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/head-3d-printer-action-212295607?src=GPL-Jl_Y8_FM-hXltk4zcw-1-11">www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For many people, craft is wooden chairs and pottery, all lovingly constructed by hand. A 3D-printed plastic object? Not so much.</p>
<p>The work of Australian designer Berto Pandolfo, shown in a new <a href="http://chippendalecreative.com/exhibitions/berto-pandolfo/">exhibition</a> at Kensington Contemporary in Sydney, upends that rule. His sidetables demonstrate that digital fabrication techniques like 3D printing offer new possibilities for design practitioners with a craft ethos.</p>
<p>By using new technology to enrich rather than substitute traditional techniques, he is part of a movement that the writer Lucy Johnston has termed <a href="http://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/digital-handmade-craftsmanship-and-the-new-industrial-revolution-hardcover">“the digital handmade”</a> – designers that use emerging digital techniques to create desirable objects.</p>
<p>Craft is a contested term, especially in an era where machines have taken the place of work previously done by hand. Broadly, it’s an approach guided by tradition, sensitivity to materials and manual techniques. Pandolfo’s show explores the place of 3D printing within such a practice. The result is objects that feel distinctive rather than mass manufactured, despite their online origins.</p>
<p>3D printing, more accurately referred to as <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214860414000104">additive manufacturing</a>, creates objects by depositing material layer-by-layer. For furniture design in particular this is a radical shift away from traditional methods of material subtracting (think of carving) as well as forming and joining. Referred to as the third industrial revolution by technology writers such as <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21552901">Paul Markillie</a>, additive manufacturing was first used as a tool to construct prototypes directly from computer-generated models.</p>
<p>Some 3D printing techniques are favoured by industrial designers on a mass scale. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E5MfBAV_tA&t=5s">Selective laser sintering</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgQvqVq-SQU">direct metal laser sintering</a>, for example, are two relatively expensive processes that have proven <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00170-011-3878-1?LI=true">particularly useful</a> in the biomedical and aerospace industries. </p>
<p>Processes such as <a href="https://medium.com/@enggtechnique/fused-deposition-modeling-fdm-3d-printing-technology-9154f637c269">fused deposition modelling</a>, on the other hand, are more affordable and more accessible to designers working on one-off objects like Pandolfo. Desktop 3D printers such as CraftUnique’s <a href="https://craftunique.com/category/craftbot-plus-3d-printer">CraftBot PLUS</a> cost a little over US$1,000.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BwPgGCAseq8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">An animated video of the fused deposition modelling process.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For his exhibition, entitled MND, Pandolfo has produced a series of side tables, using fused deposition modelling to create the legs. Inspired by river stones, the legs contrast with the smooth finish of the body of the table, made by hand from kauri pine. Typically rough textures are associated with wood. In this instance, however, the wood is smooth and uniform, and the plastic is rough and irregular.</p>
<p>The 3D printing process typically produces a rough, lumpy or striped surface finish, which is often sanded down. Pandolfo decided not to, giving the side tables the markings of imperfection often associated with handmade objects. </p>
<p>He also chose the river stone form rather than a side table’s conventional turned wooden legs, in order to exploit the capacity of additive manufacturing for creating forms of <a href="https://www.designsociety.org/publication/39025/from_prototype_to_production_using_plastic_3d_printed_parts_in_furniture">subtle irregularity</a>. Rather than being regarded as incidental or antagonistic to the finished product, the surface imperfections typical of the fused deposition modelling process have been used as an opportunity. </p>
<p>Pandolfo’s work fits within the “digital handmade” movement because he has taken the technological limitations of 3D printing as a creative opportunity.</p>
<p>In fact, the marriage of 3D printing and craft represents a return to a pre-industrial values where creative intelligence and skill in making went together. </p>
<p>As Johnston suggests <a href="http://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/digital-handmade-craftsmanship-and-the-new-industrial-revolution-hardcover">in her book</a>, the industrial revolution “resulted in a diminished role for the craftsman”. Skill and imagination were removed from mass manufacture as machines and the factory line dominated the production process. The creativity once associated with handmade objects and craft became more exclusively associated with the fine arts. </p>
<p>Pandolfo’s deliberate exploration of new materials, technology and form demonstrate a blending of these supposedly contrasting virtues. </p>
<p>The broader value of this work is in demonstrating how technological hardware, such as 3D printing, need not be relegated to mass industry. Designers and handcrafters can also claim it, ensuring new meaning can emerge from our machines.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77559/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Lee is currently working with Berto Pandolfo in a research program at UTS looking at innovative solutions for the design and manufacture of objects in the context of small batch production. </span></em></p>The work of Australian designer Berto Pandolfo shows how 3D printing can be claimed as a craft technology.Tom Lee, Lecturer, Faculty of Design and Architecture Building, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/699122016-12-13T22:34:47Z2016-12-13T22:34:47ZFive reminders of how visual artists can invoke and stir deep emotions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149852/original/image-20161213-1625-1rvlcqk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sikhumbuzo Makandula’s 'Ubuzwe II', 2016, Digital photograph: Inkjet on Epsom Ultrasmooth. The mural kaSebe/Sebe's Lip (2011) is by artist Buntu Fihla.</span> </figcaption></figure><p><em><strong>Review 2016:</strong> This has been a year most of humanity would like to forget with war, disasters, racism, sexism and, especially in arts and culture, the deaths of revered icons. But it is also in the arts and culture where people look for and find hope. The Conversation Africa has asked a number of our contributors to give us five books, records, buildings, works of art and so on in their field that made a difference to them in 2016. Here is fine arts scholar Sharlene Khan’s year in review.</em></p>
<p>When the invitation came to reflect on five visual artwork highlights of 2016, my first reaction was “I’ve been stuck in Grahamstown and haven’t seen much artwork”. But on reflection this small university town (in the mainly rural Eastern Cape province of South Africa) had a fine share of exhibitions this year.</p>
<h2>1. “Ubuzwe” - Sikhumbuzo Makandula</h2>
<p>For Makandula’s graduate exhibition <a href="http://www.grocotts.co.za/content/meaning-nation-and-nationhood-09-11-2016">“Ubuzwe”</a> (nationhood) in the Albany Museum Alumni Gallery, one enters a darkened space and is met with huge digital photographs of the artist in his iconic red Catholic cassock.</p>
<p>Makandula cuts a lithe figure, yet his presence in his works is anything but. In the video “Isigidimi” (messenger), Makandula’s lonely figure, Indian <a href="http://www.tarang-classical-indian-music.com/indian_musical_instruments/ghungroos.htm">ghungroo bell</a> a-clanging, navigates the Ntaba KaNdoda monument. It’s an Israeli-inspired legacy from <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/lennox-sebe">President Lennox Sebe</a>’s rule in the apartheid-era ethnic “homeland” of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/place/ciskei">Ciskei</a>, which apart from its monolithic outer appearance feels like a state of abandonment within.</p>
<p>In a powerful scene, Makandula stands in barren concrete room in front of the symbolic crane of Ciskei –- a mural remnant called <a href="http://www.buntufihla.com/isizathu-esihle-singafihla-ububi/78o4i5aisxnmhbb6rcr805qhd2ku0b">Inyeke kaSebe/Sebe’s Lip</a> (2011) from artist <a href="http://www.buntufihla.com/">Buntu Fihla</a>, its bloody beak lying at its foot –- clanging away.</p>
<p>Although not a Catholic, I associate the sound with a procession of authority, the marking of the redeemed or a kind of exorcism. Perhaps Makandula offers some kind of spiritual cleansing of the many ideologies gone wrong that mark this place. One word followed me throughout the exhibition though: “fong-kong” (fake product). Like this tsotsi-taal (township slang) word, Makandula is masquerading as a redemptive figure, but has no redemption to provide except perhaps reflection on our past, our present, our sense of personal and collective self.</p>
<p>Such monuments signify a false dream, a separatist ideal that seemingly has no place in contemporary South Africa, but which our segregationist reality belies. “South Africa” is more aptly described by its fong-kongness. Our fong-kongness may, in fact, be the reality that we should be seeking rather than scary “nativist” visions of self (whether this is Black/White/Indian).</p>
<h2>2. “Lefa La Ntate” - Mohau Modisakeng</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149857/original/image-20161213-1613-6mualm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149857/original/image-20161213-1613-6mualm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149857/original/image-20161213-1613-6mualm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149857/original/image-20161213-1613-6mualm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149857/original/image-20161213-1613-6mualm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149857/original/image-20161213-1613-6mualm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149857/original/image-20161213-1613-6mualm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">From ‘Lefa La Ntate’ - Mohau Modisakeng (2016)</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Modisakeng’s Standard Bank Young Artist 2016 exhibition <a href="https://www.nationalartsfestival.co.za/events/lefa-la-ntate/">“Lefa La Ntate”</a> (my father’s inheritance) consists of a set of photographs and a performance, plus a series of four videos. Modisakeng’s performance is set around a wooden table that is being incessantly carved into by a number of black bodies, who at particular intervals or sounds change and cross seating, but never stop their work.</p>
<p>A young black “baas” (boss) in Trilby hat and whip sits at the head of the table. At the very far end of the room are bags of coal which, during the performance, are heaved upon the shoulders of a strong young black man, carried across the length of the table and emptied in front of the baas. Each time he does this, the young man’s face is contorted with hatred. It finally boils over, with him and baas-man engaging in a physical altercation. Baas-man’s cap, when it falls off, results in white dust falling over him, revealing his white state of mind. The works speak of the daily grind of men working amid the bowels of South Africa’s earth and economy whom we have betrayed in the light of day.</p>
<h2>3. “Noka ya Bokamoso” - Lerato Shadi</h2>
<p>Shadi’s <a href="http://www.contemporaryand.com/exhibition/noka-ya-bokamoso-a-solo-exhibition-by-lerato-shadi/">“Noka ya Bokamoso”</a> (river of the future) saw yet again the power of the live performance that has become a key strategy in visual arts. For a week, she sat for eight hours a day without eating or speaking knitting a red scroll. On one of the large walls were the traces of three red circles made up of affirmative writing (“I am…”) by Shadi which she also erased and marked again. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149860/original/image-20161213-1594-1n6sa4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149860/original/image-20161213-1594-1n6sa4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149860/original/image-20161213-1594-1n6sa4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149860/original/image-20161213-1594-1n6sa4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149860/original/image-20161213-1594-1n6sa4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149860/original/image-20161213-1594-1n6sa4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149860/original/image-20161213-1594-1n6sa4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Noka ya Bokamoso’ - Lerato Shadi (2016)</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Part of the falsity of colonial mythologies is the imagination that others can be erased. Erasure is never that simple or complete. The erased leave marks, traces, stains which others follow like a forensic investigator or a shaman and suddenly the invisibilised speak again.</p>
<p>In a smaller contained space, her new videos left me queasy. In the first we see a Spandex-ed figure roaming a dry arid landscape, the strange creature at odds with its locale.</p>
<p>In the second video, we see the disjunctive qualities of the first video continued as Shadi swallows and gags on earth and in another segment, on wool which she weaves into a phallic-like shape with her tongue. The video is painful to watch and at times I was close to gagging. </p>
<p>As a signifier, earth could represent one’s home, closeness, the stuff we are made of and return to, so why does she gag on it in the same way she does with the wool? Why is it not digestible? Shadi here perhaps yet again shows that ideologies and metaphors are much easier than the complexities of real world histories and signification.</p>
<h2>4. “Crossing Over” - Mathias Chirombo</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149863/original/image-20161213-1605-1hx2ycu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149863/original/image-20161213-1605-1hx2ycu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149863/original/image-20161213-1605-1hx2ycu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149863/original/image-20161213-1605-1hx2ycu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149863/original/image-20161213-1605-1hx2ycu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149863/original/image-20161213-1605-1hx2ycu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149863/original/image-20161213-1605-1hx2ycu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=715&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">From Mathias Chirombo’s ‘Crossing Over’ at the National Arts Festival (2016).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the National Art Festival I encountered a <a href="http://artsouthafrica.com/220-news-articles-2013/2702-june-2016-mathias-chirombo.html">small exhibition</a> entitled “Crossing Over” by Zimbabwean Grahamstown-based artist Mathias Chirombo. It was full of blue paintings – marked by unrecognisable forms that seemed carved out of the paint to have lighter blue forms that were composed of the white of the canvas etched in with the stain of the blue oils (seemingly a manipulation of a palette knife on the surface).</p>
<p>In his artist statement he talks about losing his father not very long ago and that the works are the expression of the pain he feels, the sense of loss that is incommunicable. I want to weep. I lost my father last year and, even on days when the pain is not overwhelming, the universe-sized hole inside me at losing one of the people who knew and loved me before I was born, is beyond my linguistic ability. But Chirombo manages to somehow capture something of it in carved blue paint. Loss, not just as a feeling, but as space where memories that don’t make the “Top 100 highlights” reside.</p>
<h2>5. “Ke Lefa Laka” - Lebohang Kganye</h2>
<p>Kganye’s Bamako Photography Biennale 2015 award-winning work <a href="https://www.goethe.de/ins/za/en/kul/fok/dem/20810386.html">“Ke Lefa Laka”</a> (my inheritance) is composed of two series of works which deal with oral family histories and memories, as well as personal archives which are our family albums. In a series of digital montages, Kganye overlays images of herself dressed up similar to images of her mother from days gone by. Kganye’s mother passed away in 2010 from sudden illness. </p>
<p>The works commemorate a feeling only those of us who have lost a parent know – the moment of looking at a love so great and trying to find it in the image of those we have lost, and, perhaps, rather trying to locate ourselves. In “<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/497164.Camera_Lucida">Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography</a>”, we see philosopher Roland Barthes using the same impulse gazing at a picture of his deceased mother, trying to find one that most captures her essence, falling short and theorising on our relationship with photographs.</p>
<p>In an image-saturated world, it perhaps feels like we are beyond being moved – we have seen it all before. And yet, I am reminded sitting here in this “dorpie” (small town) that visual artists have a way of moving us beyond this feeling, of invoking and stirring deep emotions in us. In the failure of monument(al) projects to capture memory and ego in exactly the right proportions, these artists’ works are instead smaller moments of time and feeling that unite us in our remembrance and sense of fong-kong selves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69912/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sharlene Khan receives funding from the National Arts Council and the National Research Foundation. </span></em></p>In an image-saturated world, it can feel like we are beyond being moved. But five exhibitions in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province in 2016 managed to capture memory and ego in exactly the right proportions.Sharlene Khan, South African visual artist and senior lecturer of Art History and Visual Culture at Rhodes University, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/640312016-08-17T19:00:42Z2016-08-17T19:00:42ZUnder the Influence of … Paul Stopforth’s Biko painting called ‘Elegy’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134410/original/image-20160817-3597-1t5w78l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Paul Stopforth (b. 1946) 'Elegy' (1980). Graphite and wax on paper on board: 149 x 240 cm
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy Durban Art Gallery</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our weekly series, “Under the influence”, we ask experts to share what they believe are the most influential works of art in their field. Here, artist/academic/forensic practitioner Kathryn Smith explains why she believes Paul Stopforth’s “Elegy” (1980) is hugely influential.</em></p>
<p>“Elegy” is a postmortem portrait of South African Black Consciousness activist <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/stephen-bantu-biko">Stephen Bantu Biko</a> (1946-1977) by <a href="http://paulstopforth.com/">Paul Stopforth</a> (b. Johannesburg, 1945). It is executed in graphite powder painstakingly polished into layers of Cobra floor wax from which countless hair-fine excisions then excavate the figure from its ground.</p>
<p>Measuring 149 x 240 cm – near life-size – it hovers between drawing, photography, sculpture and painting, demonstrating kinship with all these media and yet claiming a singular materiality. </p>
<h2>My relationship with the work</h2>
<p>The work was completed in 1980, three years after Biko’s violent death in police custody. It was purchased by the <a href="http://www.durban.gov.za/city_services/parksrecreation/durban_art_gallery/Pages/default.aspx">Durban Art Gallery</a> in 1981, where I first encountered it as a young child.</p>
<p>I have a distinct recollection of being drawn towards the surface of this phantom image. Of it filling my child-self’s visual field from above as I tried to make sense not of what, but how it was: it was obvious to me that whoever this man was, he was not asleep. And why did the light in the picture seem so off, seeping out from this body’s darkest parts like a photograph gone wrong?</p>
<p>As with the series of smaller, more fugitive drawings of Biko’s hands and feet that preceded this monumental study, “Elegy” was made with direct reference to the forensic photographs of his postmortem examination, given to Stopforth by the Biko family’s lawyer. There can be no doubt that it borrows from religious iconography, presenting Biko as a secular martyr (the clue is in the title). </p>
<h2>Why it is/was influential</h2>
<p>Art historian Shannen Hill suggested in her 2005 article “Iconic autopsy: postmortem portraits of Bantu Stephen Biko” (published in a special edition of the journal <a href="http://www.international.ucla.edu/africa/africanarts/">African Arts</a>) that Stopforth’s graphic techniques “disrupt detached viewing”. Our experience is a kind of looking that is tactile, penetrative, what I would call a forensic gaze.</p>
<p>Forensic photographs embody a beguiling paradox: they perform as evidence, yet they are not self-evident. We demand that they act as arbiters of empirical data, while knowing they are technological constructions that require expert interlocution to reveal their truths.</p>
<p>“Elegy’s” impact on my childhood idea of what art could be – do even – was utterly formative, not least because it was through an embodied connection with an image that I later learned of the existence and significance of its subject. </p>
<p>“Elegy” could be said to represent the critical coordinates of my creative and intellectual life, which has been consistently involved with ideas of the body as image and as experience, evidence and affect, absence and presence. </p>
<p>My praxis is now bifurcated between my experimental (and perhaps even impolitic) interests as an artist, and my professional responsibilities as a forensic practitioner. It requires of me, among other things, to recreate convincing facial images for deceased or disappeared individuals who cannot be otherwise legally identified, in the hope that they might be.</p>
<p>This work feeds the tensions I perceive between conceptions of identity and technologies of identification, the revelatory and obfuscatory powers of archives, and the capacity of objects to be simultaneously loquacious and mute. So it is productive to think through “Elegy” as a sort of conceptual and ethical compass. </p>
<p>Did this image subconsciously navigate my earliest tussles with school teachers who insisted that my mutual inclination towards both visual art and forensic pathology was at worst impossible and at best, deeply conflicted? Did it silently guide me, many years later, from Durban to Johannesburg, and to the <a href="http://wsoa.wits.ac.za/fine-arts/">Wits Fine Arts</a> department, where I would encounter an influential tutor who insisted the opposite, and who showed me how it could be so?</p>
<p>That tutor was <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2013-01-18-obituary-colin-richards-1954-2012/">Colin Richards</a> (1954-2012). I would later discover that he’d had his own powerful encounters with images of Biko’s body, twice. The first was while working as a medical illustrator at Wits in the late 1970s. The second was as a deliberate confrontation with his perceived complicity in the administration of Biko’s death. The outcome he presented as the multi-part work, “Veils” (1996).</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134412/original/image-20160817-3583-i26tse.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134412/original/image-20160817-3583-i26tse.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134412/original/image-20160817-3583-i26tse.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134412/original/image-20160817-3583-i26tse.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134412/original/image-20160817-3583-i26tse.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134412/original/image-20160817-3583-i26tse.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134412/original/image-20160817-3583-i26tse.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Colin Richards (1954-2012) - ‘Veils’ (1996). Mixed media.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the author</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Here Richards employs a representation of the Biblical “<a href="http://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/mysterious-veil-veronica-masterpiece-or-miracle-004917">veil of Veronica</a>”, a piece of cloth onto which the face of a suffering Christ was reportedly imprinted. As an analogue “print” made directly from a source, it is considered to be the first photograph. On his recrafted veils, Richards instead imprinted facsimiles of images of the cell in which Biko was tortured, and two macroscopic pathology photographs which do not identifiably belong to a specific body (yet they are Biko). </p>
<p>In an interview with Richards in 2004, he suggested to me that “Illustration is a hinge between the linguistic and the visual, and it can turn many ways”. This is particularly true of forensic images. Their simultaneous ability to be authoritative and obtuse is the source of their potency and fallibility. </p>
<p>Public memorialisation of the dead pivots on a core ethical decision: whether to respect personal privacy through maintaining anonymity, or to name. The dead cannot give informed consent. Publishing images of corpses is regarded as something which requires very careful management, lest such dissemination is seen to either objectify or profit from the deceased. Like public shaming, such exposure can turn many ways. And that line is thin indeed.</p>
<p>The figure in “Elegy” is not visually identifiable as Stephen Bantu Biko. This has two possible effects, neither of which are easy: sublimating his identity counts as yet another violation of the historical specificity of Biko as an individual. Protecting his identity could be considered a sensitive choice – a tactical dehumanisation, if you will.</p>
<h2>Why it is still relevant</h2>
<p>In many ways, “Elegy” tests the very limits of representational politics. After all, it’s yet another instance of a violated black man represented by his social and political opposite, an artist who embodies Apartheid’s privileged classes, specifically the white, patriarchal subject position it worked to strengthen and maintain.</p>
<p>Should this difficulty make us avert our gaze or even more seriously, reject the image? I cannot, because its effect on me now is as potent as it was three decades ago: the sharp, sour shock of touching your tongue on a battery.</p>
<p>Significant events are unlikely to rise to public consciousness without a visual record, and recent events in South Africa - such as the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/marikana-massacre-16-august-2012">Marikana massacre</a> where police killed 34 striking mineworkers - have demonstrated the extraordinary productive and destructive power of images. A direct response to the atrocities of its moment, “Elegy” reflects on political oppression, those tasked with propagating the abuse of state power and those set up to bear such abuse. It represents processes of concealment and revelation with very real social and political consequences.</p>
<p>Yet images like this are not stable; their significance is neither continuous nor equivalent. They are ciphers for what it means to be human and vulnerable within a social and political regime in which not all bodies are considered equal, and where a state under threat resorts to covert and fatal tactics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64031/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathryn Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Works like “Elegy” are ciphers for what it means to be human and vulnerable within a social and political regime in which not all bodies are considered equalKathryn Smith, Visual/forensic artist, PhD researcher, Liverpool John Moores UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.