Notes

In the late 1980s Norman Catherine produced a number of life-size Speaker of the House sculptures. Hazel Feldman has commented on a trio of Catherine’s Speakers, one in a blue suit with green spots, one dressed in a white and black spotted suit, and a third in bright yellow with black spots. ‘In Speakers of the House,' she wrote, 'a wiry trio of sculptures are dressed in garish gear. They are rendered as crude caricatures of pop stars cum politicians backed by their ghetto blasters. At once they are performers in a pageant, carnival or vaudeville spectacle. Full of sound and fury, their animal patterned suits attesting to the fact that a leopard never changes its spots.’¹

It is indeed fascinating to look at Catherine’s witty and astute Speakers made some thirty years ago in Apartheid South Africa. In light of the current political climate, and over twenty years since the 1994 democratic elections, it is uncanny just how relevant these works still are today, if not more so.

Following the signing of The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa in 1996, Catherine presented a similar but much taller version of Speaker of the House (1989) to the Constitutional Court art collection, and like the others in the series, it is made of canvas, metal, wood and acrylic. The court’s Speaker is clad in same black and white leopard print. At 251 cm high, colourful and elevated, it looms large in the voluminous public gallery of the constitutional court. It has over the years attracted much attention, wry smiles and elicited comment from the streams of visitors who pass through the court building every day.

¹ Hazel Feldman. (2000) Norman Catherine, Johannesburg: Goodman Gallery. Page 64.