AVA Gallery
10.10 - 21.11.2024
‘Destruction, Resilience, Namaqualand’ was a group show curated by Namaqualand resident and artist, Ulric Roberts, that featured works by Roberts, Ronesca Cloete, Vincent Meyburgh, Edwina Le Fleur and Lynette du Plessis. The show took place at AVA Gallery late last year, the works in this exhibition were localised to a critical expression of grief at the resource extraction of the Nama Khoi Municipality, following the establishment of the first commercial copper mine in South Africa, in Springbokfontein, Namaqualand in 1852. The Namaqualand region, formerly occupied by Nama pastoralists, was subsequently divided into a series of commercial mining towns. The group of artists, most of whom are residents of the region, relayed deeply personal accounts of land dispossession and ecological ruin through abstract paintings, photography, poetry and dance. Roberts’ large-scale, pointillist-style paintings reflected the colourspace of the landscape, including the turquoise residue of copper ore extraction while poets, Cloete and Le Fleur relayed the alienated psyches of abandoned Nama women through a film essay, edited and scored by the artists collectively. The staging of the exhibition at the AVA gallery felt poignant, as the institution was originally established in 1850 as the South African Fine Arts Society, two years prior to the founding of what is now referred to as the original ‘Blue Mine’ of Springbokfontein.
The ‘Blue Mine’, an abandoned copper mining site of 1852, is stained turquoise-blue as a residue of copper ore extraction, the leftover minerals of which have oxidised from exposure to the natural elements. As early as the 1600s, Dutch colonists became intrigued by the intricate copper adornment worn by the Nama people they encountered, from then on Namaqualand became an open source for resource extraction, the legacy of which can be seen in the continued mining operations of state-owned mining companies, today. The long-since abandoned Blue Mine stands as a national monument to a history of its own loss. Roberts references the brief, iconic flower season of Namaqualand, in which thousands of wildflowers carpet the normally arid terrain. The overwhelming use of red and orange in his works, synonymous with the flower season, appear to lend themselves equally to the sinister depiction of a wildfire or, the blue, gaping wound of an exhausted mine site.
Ulric Roberts, Dream of the Quiver Tree: Once we Were a Forest, 2024
In Dream of the Quiver Tree: Once we Were a Forest, quiver trees, or kokerboom, indigenous to the Northern Cape, reach up into a neon-red sky. Roberts recalls childhood memories of the quiver tree, the hollowed-out and dampened trunks of which served as ‘refrigerators’, from which ice-cold water would be served. In Nama mythology, it is believed that if a person dies without proper burial their spirit will occupy a quiver tree. Roberts’ sky is set ablaze as the turquoise-blue trees – perhaps a reference to the self-lamenting residue of the Blue Mine – reach up and into a fiery ether. As a consequence of ecological mining devastation, whole quiver tree forests, previously synonymous with the Namaqualand landscape, have gradually been wiped out, while future mining prospects almost guarantee that the tree will eventually become extinct. This work in particular asks, what will become of those Nama spirits who occupy the quiver trees once they have all been starved out of existence?
Cloete laments the legacy of her ancestors and of herself to the image of an abandoned mine site in, Is dit ons belegging? She describes her perceived inheritance as a gaping hole, which she likens to a grave as she recounts a few plant species, amongst the six thousand species of the Namaqualand succulent Karoo biome, which have been wiped out by the refrain of colonial extractive enterprise. Cloete laments that she and her ancestors could not save themselves from their fate, as the mining towns of Concordia, Okiep and Springbok were built upon the labour of Nama men. Is dit ons belegging? forms a sonic component to Cloete’s video work, in collaboration with Le Fleur and Du Plessis. Du Plessis, trained as a dancer, is filmed against an abandoned mining site, bound by a sheer black mourning shawl that covers her head and face. While her body expresses itself freely, clad in black shorts and a sports bra, her head appears to be constricted, making her features almost indiscernible. It is as though the dancer stands in place of every Nama woman who has spent her life waiting for the return of a family member from the mines. Le Fleur’s poetry, included in this series, reflects the deep suffering of her maternal ancestors under the same plight of loss.
Ronesca Cloete (In collaboration with Lynette Du Plessis and Edwina Le Fleur), Fragmente, 2024. Video – performance & poetry
Roberts’s neon burning sky reminds me of the wildfires in the Palisades of Los Angeles, which raged for 24 days, incinerating thousands of homes, including opulent Hollywood estates. A contributing factor to the spread of these fires is the highly flammable Tasmanian Blue Gum Eucalyptus tree, the most common eucalyptus tree in LA, imported by an American sea merchant and planted in great numbers from 1870 onwards. The Blue Gum was speculated as a profitable, fast-growing tree, which could be rapidly processed for timber as growing demands for housing were made by an influx of gold-seekers to the region. It turned out that the Blue Gum is only viable timber after decades or centuries of growth and that nothing could be made of them while young. These highly flammable trees, which hold Eucalyptus oil in their leaves, have come to characterise the greater Los Angeles landscape and are now a primary culprit for the uncontainable fires that have devastated the lives of some of the wealthiest people in the world. Cloete’s question, Is dit ons belegging? comes to mind here, as we witness the world we have inherited increasingly under siege by the ongoing effects of ecological colonial violence. While the wealthiest 0.1% of the world’s homes are burnt to cinders, the legacy of indigenous Nama people is increasingly designated to myth. The works of ‘Destruction, Resilience, Namaqualand’ ask us to acknowledge the individual plant species, landscapes and people who are directly affected by the actions of our collective past, while the world has not yet turned to ash.
Ulric Roberts, Sophie’s Call, 2024, Installation: Traditional Nama reed mat, calabash, broken smoking pipe, ostrich shell beads, herb roots, tortoise shell,rusted tin cups, and broken crockery pieces
