Broke-Whole opens an aperture on the mysteries of life through the lens of death. On the surface is the broken, scarred, partially decayed state of things, beyond is a search for deeper unity, synthesis and wholeness. The whole is never static, nor final but is in a state of becoming.

Please join us for the opening on 16 JULY 2017 in Franschhoek.

In the death dioramas, chance meetings, strange contortions, couplings, conjunctions and fusions take place. The drama speaks to deathly beauty, the miraculous, ecstatic, deformed, transformed and sometimes the monstrous.

These works speak to a re-interpretation of the museum specimen, guided by plays of imagination rather than organised by any reason. Personal history is fused with natural history so the observer becomes part of the observed.

In the encounter of extended photographic observation, a bonding takes place between myself and the specimens. I find myself desiring more than the light fixed memory of a photograph. I preserve the physical remains of the dead forms, a relic of a moment of attachment – the love I feel for each and every creature and plant that comes under my scrutiny.

Time pulls everything apart. All form will end in fragmentation, degradation, ruination, and destruction with the passing of the seasons. There is human hubris in trying to hold things together, to re-arrange and re-animate them.

Death creates renewal for the dying of the old makes space and is sustenance for the new. Death is to be welcomed and honoured, not feared, for it is an integral part of the intelligent whole.