Includes bibliographical references (p. 101-104). / This dissertation explicates the work produced during the course of my Masters of Fine Art (MFA) at the Michaelis School of Fine Art. For a better understanding of this body of work, it is important that I relate the events in part that led up to its production. My intention from the start (in selecting a change of working location from The Netherlands to South Africa) was to test my practice, not only against the practical and theoretical contingencies influencing its production up to the end of 2003, but also how a specific geographical and political milieu affects its making. To do this I need to interrogate both bodies of works, those produced immediately before my MFA, as well as those arising during my studies in Cape Town. My art-historical field of reference consists mainly of West European and twentieth century American art and art theory.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-110). / This text offers an exploration into painting and metaphysical states of being and provides a framework for the reception of my body of work submitted for an MFA degree. In this project I am concerned with the translation of personal experiences to a canvas marked with oil paint. The experiences engage memories and stories mined from my family photographs, while also located in an experience of illness in my own body. Rather than directly illustrate these events, I have engaged with associated emotional states, such as feelings of loss, fear and uncertainty. My concerns are expressed either through fragmented or dismembered painted figures, or are engaged through the medium's materiality, explored and evoked through the visual and visceral qualities of a painted surface. An important part of my reading on carefully posed groups in formal family photographs is Marianne Hirsch's Family Frames: Photography. Narrative and Post memory (1997). Gathered at symbolic rites of passage, the family photograph offers ideal images of certitude, of familial togetherness and of happiness. In this body of work I reject the appearance of stability and search my family photographs for traces of ambivalent and unsettled bodily or emotional experiences.

Bibliography: leaves 45-47. / This explication is an inquiry into familial images of the past and the relationship of these images to history, memory and the present. Because some of these relationships are problematic, alternative ways of looking at memory and familial images through the medium of video are discussed. Particular attention is paid to the idea of a more visceral filmic language that attempts to access memory through the senses. I also discuss development of both my theoretical and practical concerns through the planning, production, post-production and completion of my final video, 'The Nanny, the Granny, the Momma and Me' (2004).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 107-111). / Salt in the Wound comprises a body of creative work supported by a theoretical discussion that critiques a patriarchally informed and imposed process of control over female reproduction and abortion. It also endeavours to explore social and psychological complexities and paradoxes attendant on the choice to abort a pregnancy. I survey contemporary effects of a western ideology developed in the 18th century, which proposed that the sole purpose of heterosexual sex should be procreation and that it should take place within marriage. In essence however, it is the corollary of this ideology that is my particular concern, this being the persistent inclination of western societies to perceive abortion in terms of a feminine defiance against a societal norm of maternal self-sacrifice.

Includes abstract.|Includes bibliographical references (leaves 45-46). / This paper attempts to set out the parameters for a discussion of my Masters exhibition, entitled Out of Sight. It traces out the progress of this exhibition over the course of two years, attempting to account for the parallel development of my work across the media of sculpture, drawing and figure painting. As such the paper traces out my engagement with the two major thematic concerns of my masters exhibition: the representation of the gay male body and architectural space and site. The latter concerns both my strategies for the re-modelling of the gallery space, and my approach to the representation of the specific site of Graaff's Pool, on the Sea Point Promenade in Cape Town. I set out to explain how this site, located in a liminal space, geologically, architecturally and historically, becomes a nodal point for the concerns of my masters project. As such, I begin to trace out the .themes that intersect in my sculptural re-presentations of the site of Graaff's pool operating within zones of visibility and invisibility. My translation of this site into a site-specific installation in the gallery space intentionally disturbs the viewer's ability to see, in its treatment of scale and surface, as well as obstructs and directs their movement through the space. This discussion of visibility lin visibility extends to my treatment of the figure in drawings and watercolours, paying particular attention to my working of the surface in order to trouble the act of looking, hence the visibility or presence of the figure. This enables me to introduce ideas around the difficulties of representation in general, but particularly of the gay male body and the expression of a gay male subjectivity. I introduce into my discussion, if cautiously, the ideas of Michel Foucault and Mikhael Bakhtin. I do not in any way present a synthesis of these ideas, but begin to introduce their thinking as a way of reading specific works in the exhibition. As such, I trace out a possible connection between Foucault's idea of powerlknowledge and the invisible operation of disciplinary power as placing limits on the representation of the gay male body, and as such on its visibility.

Bibliography: p. 90-93. / In today's capitalist society, the environment of the home has become increasingly insular. Though there may be television, Internet and other forms of technology that connect one to the 'outside world', time spent indoors is for many people time spent alone. My body of work is concerned with an individual's experience within the confines of the home, where the exterior (physical space) becomes a reflection of the individual's interior experience.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 120-126). / In 2007, Brian O'Doherty's words still apply. The art object and its context are intrinsically intertwined. A variety of contexts make up the mechanisms of the contemporary art world. From established organizations to more informal platforms, each performs a necessary function. Representation in a national museum or a respected public collection bestows a measure of credibility on a piece. Outside of austere exhibition rooms and refined gallery spaces, more informal arenas have their own authority. An independent artistic intervention on a busy pavement or a remote beach can suggest an anti-institutionalist stance. The artist is not bound by the conventions of more traditional structures. Yet, a great deal of interventionist work ultimately makes its way into galleries and collections in the form of residue and documentation. These become marketable and collectable products. Similarly, reputed organizations sometimes orchestrate potentially disruptive insertions into the public sphere in the form of performances or temporary installations. Even when they appear to be at odds, the different forums in which artworks exist rely on each other.

Bibliography: leaves 94-98. / Painting presents an almost infinite range of possibilities to convey meaning through the versatility and potential of the medium. It is to this potential for mimicking and representing the real world that I wish to turn; for whilst the word painting refers to the manifestation of the physical object, it also, more importantly for this discussion, refers to the act of painting itself, the application of paint onto a surface in the articulation of an illusory reality. This ability to represent in paint, upon a two-dimensional surface, the real world in such a way as to cause in the viewer an experience which is somehow like that of looking at the world, is called naturalism.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 88-93). / I have produced a series of sculpted cast figures in the medium of cowhide as part of my Masters degree. This document, titled Locating Me in Order to See You, serves as an explication of the practical component. Initially I examine the broad context in which my sculpture has been produced, and that in which it will be presented and likely to be received. In attempting to position myself within Contemporary Art discourse, I have specifically considered how Contemporary Art from Africa is often read and comprehended by both those producing work on the continent and the Diaspora, and those interpreting, critiquing, collecting and marketing it, mainly in the West. The basic premise for this is a discussion of the inescapable labels of Black Artist and Black Art and what they imply within the context of Contemporary Art discourse with reference to Africa and more specifically, South Africa. As an emerging Contemporary African Artist I am faced with confronting some of the stereotypes and assumptions associated with art and artists of the continent and! or the legacy of the Apartheid regime.

Bibliography: leaves 76-86. / Racism is a phenomenon of inferiority. Our blackness is a phenomenon of pride. We are not out to hate Whites. We are out to treat them simply as people. The point, however, is that we can no longer care whether or not Whites understand us. What we do care about is understanding ourselves and, in the course of this task, helping the Whites to understand themselves. Now we are rejecting the idea their idea which unfortunately has also become deeply embedded in the souls of many of us - the idea that we live by their grace. We may live by the grace of God, but we do not live by the grace of the Whites. (Small, 1971)