Notes

While married to printmaker Bruce Atwood, Judith Mason and her husband moved to Tuscany in Italy in the late-1980s, settling in the village of Montanino outside Florence. On her return to South Africa in 1992, Mason created a phenomenal artist’s book titled The House in Montanino, ring-bound and each page in the shape of a basic house (triangle-shaped roof over squareshaped wall). This shape forms the basis of the present lot, the house becoming the shape of three tombstones. Mason had to walk past a graveyard on her way to the Montanino village square and the graffiti on the tombstones inspired her to create this phenomenal triptych. Mason previously drew tombstones featuring graffiti in another artist’s book she jointly created with Afrikaans poet, Wilma Stockenstrom, called Skoelapperheuwel, Skoelappervrou (1988). The two children of the narrator in the epic poem frolick in the graveyard, adorning the stones with childlike shapes. The graffiti on the three tombstone shapes in the present lot, however, is of a completely different sensibility, or lack of sensibility, representing such issues as women’s reproduction rights and right-wing activism intertwined with lyrical memories of the deceased.