Aircraft tragedy the inspiration for EL artist’s leaf print exhibit
A FAMILY tragedy that shook her world when she was just 16 was the impetus behind East London artist Roxandra Britz’s collection of digital leaf prints that float on canvas as if suspended on air.
The gum tree leaves – each one intriguingly different – form an integral part of Britz’s exhibition which opens at the Ann Bryant Art Gallery’s Coach House this evening at 6pm.
“I am Zimbabwean and in 1979 my parents were shot down in a plane at the end of the Rhodesian war after they spent their anniversary at the Victoria Falls,” said Britz, who suffered a delayed reaction to the catastrophe following the 9/11 attacks in the United States.
“9/11 affected me profoundly and I realised I needed to look at what had happened to me. The idea was to honour the 59 people who died on my parent’s flight and so I did 59 leaves because to me a leaf is a peaceful symbol of life.”
Britz, who has exhibited at the Grahamstown Arts Festival, Cape Town’s Irma Stern Museum gallery as well as in Johannesburg and Bloemfontein, shares the Coach House space with Anton Chapman, who, like her, graduated from Rhodes University with a masters in fine art in the 1980s.
Chapman now lives in New Zealand and his abstract oil paintings lament the loss felt by the San at the advent of the white man and are an exploration of mythology and the imagination.
Britz began teaching at the Belgravia Art Centre in August after moving from Grahamstown where she was head of the Diocesan School for Girls art department. Her exhibits include gentle colour monotypes of proteas, abstract monotypes of figures suspended in space and an endearing range of “political animals”, some of which are now in Sir Richard Branson’s private collection.
“It’s my claim to fame! They were bought in Cape Town and are apparently in his lodge in Mpumalanga.”
● The dual exhibition opens at the Coach House at 6pm tonight and will be up until December 19. —