David Brits

Listings(s)

'VICTOR VICTOR'

iArt Gallery Wembley is pleased to present David Brits’ solo show, VICTOR VICTOR. Up until 1994, almost all able-bodied white male South Africans were called up for National Service around the time of leaving high school. As far as most of these young men were concerned, there was little option but to perform this duty or face harsh consequences. From the late 1960s to the early 1990s, as many as 300 000 young South African men served in the military, many of whom were sent to fight the ‘Border War’ in northern Namibia and Angola.
Today the sons of those men may question their fathers’ motives. Brits reflects on these men, and his own relationship with his father. He traces his path through the past by scratching, defacing and blacking out found images posted by ex-servicemen on Facebook. In another series of collages on vintage paper, drawings of South African soldiers are half obscured by torn images from natural history collections. Out of the patriarchal authority, symbolised by uniforms and flags, a new vocabulary is built, populated with hybrid creatures that mesh flora and fauna, obscenity and pathos.

24 August 2011 - 21 September 2011

1969

David Brits will be presenting his second solo exhibition, 1969 at Grande Provance, Franschoek. The show’s title marks the year that Brits’ grandfather led a rescue mission to the most remotely inhabited place in the world, Gough Island. A rocky landmass jutting out of the south Atlantic Ocean, South Africa has maintained a weather station there since 1956.

As commander of what was then the only helicopter equipped vessel in the South African Navy – the SAS Simon van der Stel – his ship was dispatched from Cape Town on a mission to find two missing South African meteorologists. The men had gone on a hike hours before the island was hit by an unexpected and violent storm. Enduring high seas and foul winds, the SAS van der Stel’s journey to the island lasted almost two weeks. After days of searching Gough’s unforgiving terrain, the bodies of the weathermen were eventually found – they had died of exposure several days before.

Taking place at the height of the Cold War, the rescue was a subtle, yet important display of South Africa’s naval capabilities within the strategic Cape Sea Route. In an era of state-controlled media, the Rescue to Gough Island became a media sensation, and in many ways captured South Africa’s collective imagination. 

A series of drawings based on a small family archive of personal photographs and newspaper clippings relating to that time, 1969 offers both a window into an unusual event from the past, as well as a glimpse into the life of Brits’ grandfather - a man he hardly knew.

16 June 2013 - 28 August 2013