Notes

‘Berni Searle’s video Seeking Refuge (2008), filmed in the barren volcanic landscape of Lanzarote Island in the Canaries, has the black-clad artist walk barefoot from the sea through dark sand dunes, finally spiralling in on a hollow in the landscape where she curls up. Finding refuge by returning on her path may well symbolise a need to restore a more direct contact with our planet, a means to claim our place within it.’

Virginia MacKenny (2013) ‘Land Matters’, in Art South Africa, 11(4): 44.

Photo credit: Tony Meintjes.

Provenance

Strauss & Co, Cape Town, 16 February 2019, lot 24.

Exhibited

Stevenson, Cape Town, Berni Searle: Recent Work 2007/2008, 4 September to 11 October 2008.

National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa, curated by Karen Milbourne, 22 April 2013 to 5 January 2014, the video Seeking Refuge exhibited.

Literature

Virginia MacKenny (2013) 'Land Matters', Art South Africa, 11(4): 44.

Sophie Perryer (ed) (2008) Bernie Searle: Recent Work 2007/2008, illustrated in colour on page 57.