Shining Artifact of the past: Man

Shining Artefact of the Past – Man & Shining Artefact of the Past – Woman

Shining artefact of the past man/woman are photographs of objects made by the artist from clothing previously owned and worn by migrant sugarcane workers. 

Her interest in previously owned clothing derives from clothing having such a strong personal bond with an individual, because of its nearness to the wearer's body. It becomes more than just a personal belonging, but an accompanying substance which takes part in the wearer's routine and body movement and shares in the life of the wearer.

Using previously owned clothing in an artwork as medium has the effect of amplifying the ability of that artwork to become a more direct, true and tangible representation of the individual to whom it once belonged, more so than would a realistic portrait of the same person.

A fitting parallel can also be drawn between our human condition and a withering piece of clothing, here being destroyed even further by cutting it to pieces and then reassembling it to create a new born object with new meaning.

African textiles are significant in that they have always played an important role in tribal identity, status, life celebrations and burial rituals as well as being a sign of mind states like bereavement in the case of a funeral or joy at a wedding. The weaving process itself embodies many spiritual and mythical meanings. One is that each stage of spinning and weaving thread is a symbolic analogy to human reproduction and resurrection.

Shining artefact of the past man/woman were inspired by well preserved bodies found at ancient burial sites covered by layers of clothing or burial shrouds and are a continuance of all of the above themes, but also an expansion to the exploration of themes such as the layering of cloth in ancient interments, like layers of soil strata in archaeology or layers of meaning in an artwork and certain attributes of cloth, like the ability to cover, protect, conceal and separate. Each head can be a representation of a person, almost like being an artifact of that persons's life. The photographs were taken in such a way as to suggest pages in a catalogue of a museum of archaeology or from a coffee table book on the subject of archaeology or entomology and suggests another level or layer of representation.