Wim’s art journey on display

“The same thing can have vastly different meanings to different people,” argues the renowned artist

RENOWNED South African contemporary artist Wim Botha’s work is on display at Norval Foundation in Tokai, Cape Town.

Titled Heliostat: Wim Botha, the exhibition explores the transformation of light and brings together key works of his career.

Botha chats to us about his exhibition, Heliostat – a collection bound together by the theme of refraction.

Can you tell us how that works together and why it’s relevant to your practice?

So it is an unusual experience for me, because Heliostat is partially historical and looking back on works that were done in a very different time in the history of the country and when I was in a different place.

So it is interesting and complex to re-frame those and to see the relationships and contrasts with the kind of work I am doing now.

Things used to be very severe, very finite, very specific, very much conceptually motivated, and complete.

I have moved to a much more free and spontaneous way of making work, which still has theoretical and conceptual underpinnings, but the making itself has become free and spontaneous, really searching for a way to make spontaneous forms that could be contained in a sculpture.

If we take a work, like Commune: Suspension of Disbelief, that would be complete and encapsulated in and of itself. But now putting that right next to the new work you’re doing for this exhibition at Norval Foundation, does it almost reframe that work as well?

I think the new work opens up the old work for me, looking back. The resonances of the old works in the new works allows the preconceived grip of the old work to loosen a little. Inevitably, looking back on things, it is like time travel for me. I encounter my earlier self, decisions I have made that I can remember making. It’s quite interesting. It will be interesting to see how visitors to Norval Foundation experience this exhibition.

Can you touch on growing up in Pretoria and your links to Afrikanerdom and how that influences your works?

A long time ago it was important and I think it had fundamental influences on me and the way I was brought up and the way I was shown the world and taught to see things. I believe it was fundamentally important, as a kid growing up in that ideology, to discover reality for yourself later on how wrong things could be, or how convincingly systems can manipulate people.

I learned that things are not to be trusted necessarily, not at face value. Things are not always what they seem. The same thing can have vastly different meanings to different people. And so, I think that part has definitely been fundamental to a lot of work that I do.

Do you think it is important to have shows like this while an artist is alive? Do you think it is more important that artists are given the opportunity to show their old work in relation to what they are producing now, and what could be possible for the future?

I resisted the idea of a survey exhibition. From the start, I wanted to do new work only. But I realised that maybe it is a conceit, and maybe there really is value in the older works and value for other people to see it, not just for me.

I think it’s a fantastic opportunity to almost bookend a period. I trust this is not a retrospective (laughs)or soon to be posthumous. I think its valuable sometimes to see it, especially in this case, because some of the works are in the school syllabus and they have been in storage for the last 15 years so nobody could see it. And in that sense, I think it’s really a valuable opportunity to see things in context.

The title for the exhibition is Heliostat. Can you explain the meaning of the title?

I wanted something that speaks to a lot of the themes in the works.

Older works used to be more socio- political and gradually, and interestingly, I am also realising now, it has become more cosmological and philosophical.

Works that deal with bigger questions, such as what it means to be human and what it means to seemingly be at the mercy of the gods. Also looking at something being a moment in time, a frozen moment, a snapshot moment.

Heliostat: Wim Botha is on display at the Norval Foundation, 4 Steenberg Road, Steenberg Estate, until January 2019. Gallery 2-8 Curated by Owen Martin

ARTIST Wim Botha’s exhibition is on display at the Norval Foundation.