Thirteen life size works made over time with the earliest dating from 1999 and the most recent 2008 by Tshwane University of Technology lecturer Jan van der Merwe reveal his ongoing preoccupation with universally relevant issues such as power, responsibility and violence. This South African artist is exhibiting three-dimensional polysemic conundrums at the iart Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa until 31 October.
On the last day of the installation I called at the gallery to meet Van der Merwe and talk about his work. This sensitive South African artist, now in his fifties, is enthusiastic and candid about the multilayered meaning of the objects he arranges and transforms to create the encapsulated pathos and nostalgia inherent in his three dimensional messages. Made or clad in rusted metal, plastic, wax and wire that has been bent, seamed with wire and bitumen, rusted and covered with fine soil to emphasize an archaeological evocation; his old army jacket, a little girl’s party frock, a woman’s petticoat, take on the same rusted finish as the peforated tin used by the homeless and vagrants worldwide to shield the flames of open fires. His choice of rust and the crumbling qualities of the finish are meant to invoke thoughts about archaeological links to the past, an area of scholarly speculation and science that allows us to appreciate what we have in common now with those who were alive centuries ago. Inevitably this is done by examining evidence from opposite ends of the social spectrum, from royal tombs to rubbish dumps.
Van der Merwe’s choices are no less extreme. From the simple vinyl long playing record and its formerly paper sleeve which he poetically transforms into a rusty artifact presenting a witty 2004 ‘Moon River Eclipse’ to the 2005 ‘Water and Rust’; an arrangement of found objects including a pulpit, jacket, baptismal font with TV monitor and perforated ‘pulpit’ cloth, the role of the artist as social conscience becomes significant. The combination of natural and hi tech, the latter in the form of TV monitors continuously screening black and white filmed sequences with accompanying sound is satisfying on many levels.
Another detailed examination relates to the scourge of violence afflicting South African society in the 2003 installation ‘Koeëlwas/Bullet Proof Jacket’. Here, child sized, clear plastic jackets filled with wax ‘bullets’ and ‘buttons’ made from cartridge bases are gruesome reminders of a global society where children are victims of carelessness, cruelty and often callous disregard for their civilized development. A small cardboard packet of Crayola wax crayons forms part of the arrangement, drawing attention to childlike innocence and its opposite, amoral cruelty. A television clad in a similar plastic ‘bullet proof’ jacket containing pseudo ammunition, continuously shows guns being discharged during target practice. A clear plastic hospital screen separates this work from the one opposite where a white hospital trolley containing medical items for the cleaning and treatment of wounds has a basin on the bottom shelf bulging with little cotton rectangles known as ‘2-by-4’ cloths which are used for cleaning weapons in the South African army. ‘Cleaning Instructions’ (2003), more a paradoxical moral message than a thing of beauty, incorporates a rusted ammunition trunk that houses the TV monitor continuously playing footage of a gun being carefully cleaned.
Van der Merwe has produced the work on show during the past nine years with the most recent, ‘Nowhere To Go’ 2008, to the right as one descends the stairs into the basement. Simple objects like a suitcase and an unoccupied chair pose questions that I think border on the ‘poetic moment’ Van der Merwe strives to create. On yet another level, a horizontal row of eleven Perspex cabinets mounted on the wall face the visitor as they descend the staircase. ‘Unclaimed/Onopgeëis’ contain rusted metal envelopes, weathered and seemingly neglected in a reference to the unheeded and unheard voices of the eleven language groups of the ordinary people in South Africa. At this time of political upheaval a poignant grouping of material objects that represent an ignored but significant part of society who always play a role responsible for the party in power but rarely understanding why.
It would be unfair not to mention the exposed piping of the gray-painted basement which in an unexpected way resembles the interior of a marine vessel. Here the rusted surfaces of metal exposed to the vagaries of the weather are at constant odds with those relying on the floating metal constructions to get them and their precious cargoes from port to port. But that weathered effect assumes the most intimate of guises seen in this exhibition variously as a vanity case, discarded petticoat, little girl’s party dress and a man’s shirt and tie. This intimacy extends to Van der Merwe’s sources of inspiration, intensely personal departures like ‘Biegbak/Confessional’, which represents the transitory nature of material existence and was inspired by the artist’s grandmother or ‘Ouma’ the word for grandmother in Afrikaans. In this curtained cubicle we encounter a rusted kitchen sink with a filmed sequence continuously playing in black and white of hands endlessly scouring a pot in the bottom of the basin. Above the dishes, oven gloves, dish cloths and apron another TV monitor represents a window with continuously streaming rain falling into a courtyard. The artist’s recollections of his grandmother performing repetitive domestic rituals and the comforting nature of religious ritual banishes the idea of domestic drudgery as he speaks about his grandmother praying at the kitchen sink. The playful nature of the cross referencing between contexts is satisfying as thoughts of the matter of a meaningful mantra surface in my consciousness.
The universal relevance of “my social comment” is important to Van der Merwe. But he is not without a wicked sense of humour which in this exhibition manifests itself in ‘Oogtoets/Eye Test’ a collection of spectacles constructed from found objects custom-designed to be literal interpretations of their titles which range from the three-lensed ‘Clairvoyant’ to the one-lensed ‘Tunnel-Vision’. The spectacles represent conditions experienced by both the powerful and powerless in compassionate but funny lampooning.
Van der Merwe tells me that the highpoint of his career thus far has been a 2006 retrospective exhibition at the Pretoria Art Museum. He has exhibited overseas, participating in the 2005 South African delegation to the art and culture games in Kuching, Sarawak where he received a special award for his installation. Since 2001 he has worked with mentally handicapped artists in Belgium and was invited in 2007 by ‘Onze Nieuwe Toekomst’ supported by the University of Ghent to assist in the creation of an installation as part of their 10th year anniversary celebrations which took place at the “Kleur Laboratorium” (Colour Lab), SMAK Museum in Ghent. His installation was entitled ‘Wereldreizigers’ (World travelers). He has a few works permanently on exhibition at Feniks,vzw,Avelgem,Belgium.
Jan van der Merwe was born in Virginia in the Orange Free State in 1958 earning his Master’s degree in Technology, Fine Art with distinction from the Technikon, Pretoria in 1999. He has received numerous awards and has work in public collections in South Africa and abroad. A family man who confesses to having to juggle personal and professional priorities in a cheerful clutter of uncompromised creativity, Van der Merwe’s exhibition is bringing a chilling, topically relevant issue into focus in a virtuoso tour de force of skilled communication.
Veronica Wilkinson
(for Saatchi Online Blog)