The body of photographs discussed in this document examine the way in which the landscape was constructed to enforce separation, in the form of separate amenities, during the time of apartheid in South Africa. This project is situated within the context of a long history of representation of the landscape, but I will position my practise within the more recent political history of apartheid during which separate amenities were created. Referring to David Goldblatt's interpretation of structures with regards to his representation of the South African landscape I will examine both the political and structural history of these locations.

Includes bibliographical references. / In this project I have attempted to determine and analyse my own "mechanisms of filtering, selecting and assembling" (Hoptman 2007: 128). The cannibals' banquet consists of a practical body of work and an artist's book. The function of the artist's book is to contextualise my creative practice within a theoretical and historical context. My area of interest is assemblage and its relation to consumption. A primary attribute of consumption is that it is premised upon the creation of a constant desire for new things. The corollary of this process is a mass of obsolete or 'dead' objects, which are discarded to make room for these recent acquisitions, ending up in scrap yards, second hand shops and flea markets. My interest is in what I perceive as an integral relationship between the origins and development of assemblage and that of a consumer society, since both function within object relations. With object relations I mean the interaction between people and objects as although objects themselves are lifeless, the relationship between an object and a person is animated through the assignment of meaning to an object by a person. In this sense the object stands in relation to the person who projects certain attributes onto it as the carrier of such meanings. The same object could conceivably hold completely different meanings assigned to it by different individuals at the same time.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 93-102). / The purpose of this document is the elaboration of a system of thought that sees art as an empty structure, in a way that is analogous to the conceptual mechanics of Buddhism. What is meant exactly by the term Buddhism will I hope, become clearer as the reader moves through it. Likewise, it is hoped that a perspective on art that sees it as sharing certain conceptual tendencies with Buddhism will emerge. What must be borne in mind for the meantime is the following; firstly, that the concept of emptiness in Buddhism is not nihilism, and this holds true for the system that I describe; it is my position that much art is empty (in a way) and necessarily so. Secondly, that both systems (though not exclusively), are ways of relating, rather than bodies of text or specific images. Wittgenstein's view of philosophy is analogous to this last point in that he insisted on seeing philosophy as a method rather than a science (Perloff 1996: 46). This tendency of mode over product, or way of relating over the thing made, is a critical underlying component of what follows in this document and in my practical production.

Includes bibliographical references. / This series of photographs were the initial process works for my project. I began photographing my body, predominately my legs, in personal spaces. These spaces included my family home and my studio and depicted performances of my interaction with these spaces and objects and elements from the home. This series of process works introduced to me to the idea of working within the home and photographing my performances. They differ from the main body of work, which was photographed in my mother's new home - the location that I chose for my photographs and performances, in that they were not remediated into collage works.

Includes bibliographical references. / Through this research I have endeavoured to unpack the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of my own obsession with collecting photographs, by relating it to a theoretical framework as well as to contemporary artistic practice. I further present here examples of my own body of work to show how I have given form to my concerns.

Also available online. / The key to understanding my project lies in the assumption that the task of representation for contemporary painting is different from that of newer media such as photography and film. I see the role of painting as being the representation of the past; an engagement with history. Many of the painters who have inspired my way of seeing are artists who re-imagined the role of pre-modernist narrative painting and re-asserted it in contemporary practice. Contemporary narrative painting occupies a different role from that of its pre-modernist predecessors, such as Romantic painting. It also occupies a different role in relation to dominant narrative media of photography and film.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 114-117). / At a dinner party in Durban after the opening of Come, a 2007 exhibition of Michaelis MFA students, a woman asked me about my work. When I told her it was "the bullets", by way of description (One Hundred Bullets With Your Name On Them), she said something along the lines of "oh, that's so fascinating, I really had thought a man had made them".

Includes bibliographical references (p. 73-75). / In this project melancholy and the related experiences of loss and longing as explanatory concepts, are the basis fromwhich visually interpret the body of practical work that emphasises the role of emotion and personal experience in locating meaning.

Includes bibliographical references.

Native Work is an installation-artwork consisting of 38 portrait photographs. It was made in response to an encounter with the archive of Alfred Martin Duggan-Cronin’s photographs of black southern Africans taken between 1919 and 1939. In its creative focus on traditional black South African culture in a post-apartheid context, Native Work is one of a series of related - but independent - projects occurring contemporaneously with it in the city of Cape Town (a situation examined more closely in the conclusion to this document: see p. 33). Native Work is motivated by a desire for social solidarity - a desire which emerges as a particular kind of historical possibility in the aftermath of apartheid. As such, it finds inspiration in Duggan-Cronin’s commitment to affirm the lives of those black South Africans who many of his peers would have dismissed as unworthy subjects of such attention. Native Work echoes that commitment by staying close to an impulse of tenderness discernible in Duggan-Cronin’s life-long project, and pays homage not only to Duggan-Cronin, but also to the expressive life of those who appeared in his work.