1st Sep, 2019 9:30
Modern & Contemporary Art
8
Willie Bester (South Africa 1936-1975)
Poverty Driven
steel, enamel, oil on canvas and found objects
Artwork date: 2002
Sold for R398,300
Estimated at R500,000 - R800,000
steel, enamel, oil on canvas and found objects
Artwork date: 2002
(1)
245 x 145 x 170 cm
Notes:
This radically modified bulldozer is one of the most significant mixed media sculptures Bester produced in the years immediately after his career began to blossom in the late 1980s. Images of the bulldozers, which are scattered throughout the artist’s early collage assemblages, function as important metaphors of social and political change, alluding to the ideas of both demolition and reconstruction. But unlike commercial bulldozers Poverty Driven is a hybrid, makeshift concoction that includes references to various farm implements while at the same time drawing on the wirework art-making traditions associated with the rural poor. At one level, therefore, this monumental work pays homage to the lives of farm workers and the inventive creativity of migrant labourers, who adorned their knobkerries and other artefacts with densely woven patterns fashioned from plastic-coated telephone wire. While in this and other ways Poverty Driven signals a nostalgia for an integrated rural past, these intricately crafted, time-consuming details also allude to the imaginative powers of the ordinary men and women who in recent decades have found new ways to market their skills to urban buyers. At the same time, Bester reflects on the realities of what it means to live in closely populated urban environments where people have in many cases become dislocated from the social and emotional anchors that once sustained them. As in some of his other works, his introduction of hospital drips reminds the viewer that, under normal circumstances, people can expect to be cared for and nurtured. But rather than affording comfort, this medical paraphernalia can also signal a loss of personal control. As additions like these suggest, Poverty Driven is a deeply evocative work that points to the complex emotional experiences of people grappling with the challenge of surviving unexpected and unanticipated upheavals as they move from the comfort of the known to the uncertainties of the future.
Sandra Klopper
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Auction: Modern & Contemporary Art, 1st Sep, 2019
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