Notes

On the back of the billboard displaying the repeated image of a girl and the inscription "Radiance of Faith" is the text of a pamphlet in English and Xhosa, distributed at a police road block in the early 1990s.   These two languages had generally not previously been combined without Afrikaans in any context.   The text of the pamphlet is as follows:

WE ARE HERE TO:

• Search for stolen property

• Search for unlicensed firearms and ammunition

• Identify suspects and arrest them

This is necessary to maintain law and order and to protec [sic] you from troublemakers.

You have no reason to fear us.

Thank you for your co-operation.

 
If there is any message in Jane Alexander’s body of work, and I think there is, I do believe one of its outstanding epigraphs, if not the most important, is a plea for a deeper awareness of the fragility of our common condition, in all its tangible and intangible dimensions, and therefore for an ethic of reciprocal respect, fairness and constructive concern born out of our shared vulnerability. ¹

So says leading European philosopher, Pep Subirós, in his catalogue essay for the exhibition selected by Durham University’s Institute of Advanced Study to complement the 2008/2009 research programme entitled ‘On Being Human’.

Significantly, this sculpture was produced in 1993 and 1994 as South Africa was on the cusp of democracy, a time of transition fraught with promise and peril. The abject figures appear to be hurrying towards something – one drags a meagre bundle while another has arms raised as if to ward off danger. They are almost oblivious to the billboard with its contradictory messages. The glowing face of a white child is backed by an ominous message taken from Apartheid-era, police road block pamphlets.

Privilege and poverty, entitlement and disenfranchisement, security and threat appear to confront one another across an insurmountable divide. But, as in all Alexander’s work, questions are raised and, rather than easy answers being provided, we are made aware of complexities and ambiguities. Culpability and redemption are alluded to in the text ‘Radiance of Faith’ which is also the title given to the three suited figures in African Adventure 1999 – 2002, the central work of Alexander’s DaimlerChrysler Award exhibition that toured local and international venues.

Continuing her practice of including aspects of her sculpture in her photomontages, Alexander featured the figures from this work in Portrait of a man with landscape and procession (Bantu Stephen Biko 1946 – 1977),² one of which is in the Permanent Collection of Iziko South African National Gallery.

While still an undergraduate student at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Alexander won the National Fine Arts Student Competition and the Martienssen Student Prize. Since then she has received several major awards including the Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 1995, the FNB Vita Art Now Award in 1996 and the coveted DaimlerChrysler Award in 2002. In the words of one of the DaimlerChrysler jurists, Alexander was commended for giving "form to the fragility of a multi-cultural society".

1. Pep Subirós, ‘On Being (and Becoming) Human: Notes on Jane Alexander’s Mutant Universe’ in Pep Subirós, Jane Alexander: on being human, Durham University, Durham, UK, 2009, page 20.
2. Illustrated in Jane Alexander, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany, 2002, page 106.

Exhibited

Standard Bank Young Artist Award, 1995.  Exhibition Venues July 1995 - April 1996:  Monument Gallery, Grahamstown; King George VI Art Gallery, Port Elizabeth; Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg; Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Bloemfontein; Tatham Art Gallery, Pietermaritzburg; Durban Art Gallery, Durban; South African National Gallery, Cape Town

Literature

Ivor Powell, Jane Alexander, Sculpture and Photomontage, Standard Bank National Arts Festival, 1995, page 29, illustrated

Simon Njami and Akiko Miki, Jane Alexander, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany, 2002, pages 51 and 115, illustrated