2012, Found Plastic, Photographic Print, Edition of 3
The living embodiment of a symbolic principle, the serpent must shed its past to move forward. Its spent skin will break apart and be assimilated by the environment. All matter came from nothing and one day shall return to nothing. We witness everyday the plastic expansion and contraction of matter all around us; life itself is the constant dual force of these two opposites. As extruders of our reality, we have manipulated the world as a reflection of ourselves, a cosmic undertaking. We are the fragments, we are the measure, we are the spirit of discovery.
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Exhibition Abstract
Each of us long to “shed our skin”, to be rid of the excess, the old and the past. All life must change its skin or die. By observing the snake’s transformation we get some insight into its behaviour, and thus start a process of transformation within ourselves.
The title EK-DUO ἐκδύω (Ancient Greek) has a definition of:
1. to take off, to strip one of his garments
2. to take off from one's self
3. to pull off the body, the clothing of the soul
This body of work is about adapting this shedding behaviour to our own culture. It is a way to detach and a way to innovate, a way to recreate new forms and ideas within culture. I have created the traces of my understanding of the "cosmic serpent", made using a variety of media with special attention on reusing discarded plastic.
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Current Location
Two environmentally-focussed exhibitions will feature as part of The Gordon Institute of Performing and Creative Arts’ (GIPCA) Hot Water symposium on climate change, which will take place at UCT’s Hiddingh Campus 28-29 September 2012. Facing the Climate, curated by Ann-Marie Tully, and Simon Max Bannister’s EKDUO will be exhibited at Michaelis Galleries until 13 October.
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Additional Exhibited Works
Power
2012, Found Plastic and Electrical Cables
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Sinuous
2012, Found Plastic
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Sheath
2012, Biodegradeable Plastic
The serpent is a life giver and a life taker. The coiled remains of throw-away culture have left a legacy for future generations to deal with and are already changing the environment. Essential to our survival, plastic is the fire that heals and burns us, dual in nature, part of our nature.
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Earthbound
2012, Video and Audio Loop
Screenshots below...
Through the eyes of the serpent, we slither through the wilderness, half blind to the consequence of our actions, we move toward the unknown. Each of us has the duality of the serpent’s tongue within us, each a creator and destroyer, each a sliver of the light and the dark.
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Nest
2011, Found Oceanic Plastic
Woven by the ocean from numerous discarded fishing netting, this collection comes straight from the chaos of the unyielding winds and waters of the South Atlantic gyre.
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Reef
2012, Found Plastic
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Fragments of Paradise (Drifter Series 1 - 5)
2011, Found Oceanic Plastic from South Atlantic
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Tide Line
2012, 10m x 1m shoreline transect collection from Strandfontein, Cape Town.
The shoreline is the meeting place of two worlds that feed each other. The snaking line that tells the true story of the ocean’s state. The evidence of our cumulative waste is now visible and unavoidable. Brightly coloured and fascinating in form, the pristine paradise beach we crave no longer exists, it is but a plastic dream. We can no longer ignore the pollution we are causing in our creative processes, yet we cannot stop. Dispelled from the gutters these husks of culture now drift throughout the oceans.
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More images and video from the opening coming soon...
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Other Projects.....
