Notes

This lot is one of five works from Editions for ArtThrob Portfolio 2.

This figure of Harbinger (2004/2006) appears in a number of sculptural installations, tableaux and photomontage by Jane Alexander, sometimes differently clothed or naked with “protective boots”. Photomontage has always been used by the artist as a means to elaborate on particular figures, and/or to contextualise them beyond sculptural presentations. In this work, the harbinger wears a pre-democracy South African prison uniform and shackles, standing in farmland, with the figure of an earlier Harbinger in the foreground (part of African Adventure 1999-2002), and Beast 2003 in the background. The location is an ecologically threatened wetland and estuary on the South African west coast.

Literature

Pep Subirós (ed.) (2011), Jane Alexander Surveys (from the Cape of Good Hope), Museum for African Art, New York, and Actar, Barcelona, illustrated in colour on page 158.