Mid-life crisis made artist take bull by its silken horns
WHEN she turned 40, Mandy Coppes-Martin realised that she needed to take the bull by the horns and become a fulltime artist. And she did — the giant bull made of threads of raw silk that dominates her exhibition proves it.
A pivotal point along the way was when she responded to an advert for mulberry leaves — but really, her whole working life has been focused on paper.
In 2004, she completed her master’s in fine art at what was then Wits Technikon, specialising in paper.
She tells of research in Japan, Holland and Belgium and her 14 years of professional association with the Phumani Paper Project, a paper mill and poverty-alleviation programme at the University of Johannesburg.
She works with raw silk and shifu, which is paper thread made from pineapple fibre. The effect is astounding, and the technique is unprecedented. “It took time to develop this tactile, personal approach — and I am not a patient person!”
She has a shifu-making friend in the Philippines, but her journey to working in silk began with her local knock-and-drop newspaper.
“A woman placed an advert appealing to people for mulberry leaves for her silkworms. I went to visit her not because I had leaves, but because I wanted her cocoons.”
Coppes-Martin started making paper from the cocoons, getting between 600m and 1 000m of the strong thread from each one. The spidery filigree of these drawings, cajoled into portraits and commentary on society, will blow your mind.
Her exhibition, Killing the Goose, is “about the children’s nursery rhyme of the golden goose,” she said. “The bear and bull — stock exchange symbols — also represent the greedy villagers in the original rhyme who kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”
The central motif is a proverb about the destruction of something profitable. Here it comments on society’s blind greed, which destroys natural resources. It is environmental art, not crass tree-hugging.
“Silk is thick with contradictions, historically,” Coppes-Martin said. “Although it is lustrous, it brought the plague. It represents extreme wealth and wanton social destruction.”
Not all the works on show apply to the nursery rhyme. “These are handmade flowers my great-great-great-grandmother from China made,” she said. They are so fine you are afraid to breathe near them.
In another work, a body of water is populated by large fish with angry-looking human faces. “It’s about contradictory knowledge. While we’re told to take omega 3 for brain health, fish are the first receptors of pollution.”
She glances around her exhibition and grins. “It’s a funny feeling. Your stomach’s on a platter; you don’t know what it looks like from the outside.
“So what happens next? I have many ideas. I want to make works that will be suspended between buildings.
“Everything really started when I rented a studio at Assemblage in Newtown, [Johannesburg], six months ago. I had been working from home until then. Suddenly I’m mindful of rent and time. I cannot do this alone in an insular context.
“Coming from the nongovernmental organisation world, I never believed being an artist was a viable career choice, until now. There’s no turning back.”