September 12, 2007
By Ndaba Dlamini
VIEWERS walking through the Johannesburg Art Gallery stop to contemplate an installation of disembodied golden hands mounted on a wall, gripping dowsing rods or delicately holding items like a cascade of interlinking chains.
The artwork, Unearthing by Walter Oltmann, is one of the displays in the Sasol Wax Art Award exhibition, currently on at the gallery.
The exhibition forms part of the annual Joburg Arts Alive festival held to coincide with Heritage Month.
Working with wax, five top artists have created a diversity of pieces that are part of the Sasol Wax Art Award exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery
Described as South Africa's most prestigious accolade for established artists, the award aims to reward professional artists for their achievements and contribution to the visual arts.
At a sparkling gala opening of the exhibition on 6 September, Oltmann was announced as the winner, garnering a prize of R130 000.
The Sasol Wax Art Award, now in its second year, sees top contemporary artists using wax in the creation of their work. The exhibition displays the works of the five finalists: Oltmann, Usha Seejarim, Wayne Barker, Sue Williamson, and Andrew Verster. They were selected from more than 150 nominations.
"This year's artists have explored the brief in diverse ways," according to Carola Ross, executive director of the Sasol Wax Art Award.
The exhibition includes video installations that reveal the secret lives of inner city beauty salons and the women who frequent them; works exploring the issues around tattooing and body scarification; and a home environment built entirely from wax paper.
"Other explorations of the product range from the use of the traditional lost wax process of bronze casting for sculpture to the active use of bees as a partner in the creation of artworks," Ross said.
This year's finalists have pushed the envelope in their own art practice, as well as applying the many possibilities offered by the material, both conceptually and technically, according to Sasol Wax Art Award curator Les Cohn.
Unearthed
In his work, Oltmann – a senior lecturer at the Department of Fine Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand – adapted an idea of insects to "heightened forms of feeling and sensing".
The activity of dowsing, or water divining, presents an equivalent form of "receptive feeling" in that a tool, such as a forked stick, becomes a means of magnifying the human body's intuitive response.
"I chose to call the exhibition Unearthing to underpin the notion of uncovering or bringing to light by digging, searching or discovery," Oltmann said. "It reflects the post-apartheid era impulse to uncover our history."
In a literal sense, he added, the hands with dowsing tools suggest practices associated with finding water and settlements as much as digging and mining, as a means of survival as well as exploiting the land for its riches and denying access and agency to others.
Walter Oltmann's winning exhibition Unearthing
Oltmann used wax to create hands holding dowsing objects. They were cast in aluminium, using the lost wax method where the object is first modelled in wax. The hands were then anodised in gold together with wire additions.
The presentation of the hands in 14 distinct groupings obliquely refers to the 14 Stations of the Cross, where the individual stations present the opportunity for contemplation and reflection, according to the artist.
Jewellery project
Also at the gala opening, the winning students from five art colleges and schools in Johannesburg were awarded prizes for their participation in the Sasol Wax Art Award outreach jewellery initiative competition.
"The initiative provided the opportunity for students to think creatively about the relationship between jewellery, art and wax and took the form of a competition," said Ross.
The competition introduced some wax-based methods of design and manufacturing, with the students being briefed "to create works that celebrate this relationship either in the process, medium or concept".
The Sasol Wax Art Exhibition runs until 29 September at the Johannesburg Art Gallery and daily walkabouts and a dynamic workshop programme are on offer to the public.
For more information on the exhibition contact Carola Ross on 011 726 2502.
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