WAM Endowment Auction
Live Auction, 27 May 2015
WAM Endowment Auction
Lot Estimate
ZAR 12 000 - 18 000
About this Item
Owen Ndou
South African 1964-
Snake Singer
Date unrecorded, collected between 1990 and 1993
wood and paint
120 by 49 by 40 cm
Notes
Images of snakes are a recurrent theme in Ndou’s sculptures. Snakes, some benevolent, others dangerous, also feature in Venda cosmology. (Great healers and diviners, for example, were associated with pythons.) In this work, a serpent wraps around a large trunk with a sign that states, ‘Do Not Burn the Bush’. This is perhaps a snake in its guardian role delivering an ecological warning message. Ndou’s sculptures are held in prestigious collections in South Africa including Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg Art Gallery and Tatham Art Gallery, Pietermaritzburg.
See Lot 15 for artist biography.
Provenance
Donated by Trent Read
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