Forgotten outposts of a martial era
Border War remnants evoke melancholy, writes
JO Ractliffe’s images have always left me feeling lonely. At first I found it hard to pinpoint why. In her 2008 show Terreno Ocupado (Occupied Land), I convinced myself the sensation was a product of the sheer desolation of Ractliffe’s vision of postcivil war Angola: the bleak sprawl of a landscape she described in her catalogue as equal parts Mad Max and Canterbury Tales.
Her 2010 effort, As Terras do Fim do Mundo (The Lands of the End of the World) , developed this vision into a dystopian engagement with the material residue of that war. I could have sworn my sense of abject isolation fed off the implied human presence that had made each pictured terrain uninhabitable. People had suffered here, I realised. Sadness hinges on such spaces, like a door always half ajar.
The Borderlands is the most recent manifestation of Ractliffe’s focus on the aftermath of the so-called Border War, and I think I have finally got it. It is not the air of melancholy that drifts through Ractliffe’s photographs, nor her subject — the echoes of a protracted war that still resound years later — that leave me lonely. It is not even the fact that her blackand-white images have the cold immediacy of reportage. It is how she photographs, not what. Or perhaps a bit of both.
I may have arrived at this conclusion because The Borderlands is a project that, for me, is closer to home. Ractliffe photographed at the South African locations of Pomfret, Kimberley and Riemvasmaak, all once occupied by the South African Defence Force. My own father was posted to Kimberley for basic training in the ’80s.
Despite the show’s thematic divisions according to site, there is an eerie sameness to the images. The works are further unified by the relationship between the landscape and the camera (and inevitably through it, the viewer). Ractliffe continually situates herself as an outsider looking in.
The turned back — presenting both an obstacle to the gaze and a moment of disregard — is a recurring motif. I now think that is the essence of Ractliffe’s work and why her images make me feel so very alone. I cannot help but be an anonymous voyeur of the photographic present (and the harsh history it holds within it), neither invited nor fully included. Always an interloper.
That said, The Borderlands is a compelling, if clinical study of spaces in which a history of war intersects with a reconciliatory present, one that earns a reiteration of critic Okwui Enwezor’s compliment: Ractliffe is indeed “one of the most accomplished and underrated photographers of her generation”.
Simon Gush’s concurrent solo show, Work, is best summed up by an anecdote he offers in his press release: “It’s a conversation that often happens in airplanes . . . the person next to me will suddenly try to strike up a conversation as the plane starts its descent: “So, what do you do?” “I’m an artist.”
“Really? And what do you do to make money?”
In this case, Gush’s body of work — produced after work hours — interrogates the nature of work as idea. He turns his critical eye to the language of the workplace, its arbitrary hours and its impact on the workaday week. A favourite of mine is Paid Time Off, a farcical contract that pokes fun at the exchange between artist and buyer, an agreement that obligates the “purchaser” to take a day’s leave on March 14 2014. Should said purchaser not fulfil the terms, “the artwork shall be deemed not to exist and this agreement shall be null and void”. It is a fun take on an old idea, and Gush executes it with aplomb.