In my MFA project Unstable Ground: A Photographic Reflection on the Landscape of Table Mountain, I have photographed the landscape of Table Mountain, surrounding parks and green spaces to reflect on the entanglements between its history, notions of nature and landscape and subjective relationships to place. I have tried to make sense of this site through my photographs, research, and writing, not looking for stability but seeking to reveal the precarious, the in-between, the unseeable, while also trying to learn more about my own relationship with this landscape and land and how it allows or denies photographic representation. Table Mountain's geology, composed of layers of rock and sediment, is overlaid on its surface with human impositions, and its cultural history is similarly composed of the sedimented layers of meaning brought to it by all those who have interacted with the site over time. These layers and erasures contribute to this project's reading of the site as a palimpsest. Each place I photographed represented multiple stories, multiple opinions, multiple histories and multiple points of view, and I have used different methods of layering in my photographs to evoke these strata and deposits.

Section 27 (1b) of the Bill of Rights under the Constitution (1996) of the Republic of South Africa states that: “Everyone has the right to have access to sufficient food and water …” This section is preceded by section 26 (1) which states that: “Everyone has the right to have access to adequate housing.” Violation of these fundamental human rights in isolation may apply to a vast category of people. However, the residents of Endlovini in Khayelitsha find themselves at the intersection of oppressions informed by the simultaneous infringement of both these rights. For these residents, inequality in access to safe clean drinking water is directly informed by their location and informal housing status. This is a difficult position to be in because the people of Endlovini are neighbours to Litha Park, a recognized formal section of Khayelitsha whose residents enjoy relatively adequate access to quality water, and whose water services are astronomically better than those rendered in Endlovini. This disparity is immediately written off as a class issue. However, this study finds deeper links between geography and water inequality. This study uses John Rawls' theory of justice to highlight water inequality in Cape Town. The study uses qualitative research methodologies through fieldwork conducted in the formal settlement of Litha Park and the informal settlement of Endlovini in Khayelitsha, to illustrate that there are inequalities in how people within the same township access water, but both settlements are still marginalized, compared to the wealthy suburbs of Cape Town. Interviews were conducted with the residents of both settlements, as well as officials from the City of Cape Town's Water and Sanitation Department to gather data and address the research question: “How does the City of Cape Town's response to the water crisis further perpetuate water inequality in the impoverished communities of Khayelitsha?” Key findings revealed that water inequality in Khayelitsha may have been created by apartheid spatial planning, but is sustained by the disregard for poor communities by the local government through unequal, anti-poor service delivery that continues to disenfranchise residents who live in informal settlements through poor water services. The study, whose main objective is to highlight the disparities in water access and services received by the different locations within the township, adds to the body of knowledge on inequality in water access by providing a focused comparison between different kinds of settlements within the same township; to highlight the difficulties in applying Rawls' justice theoretical framework where existing research focuses on comparing townships as a monolith to the suburbs.

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Please note: creative writing theses are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for these. To request private access, please click on the locked Download file link and fill out the appropriate web form. / N/A / 2031-01-01

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This project is concerned with articulating a number of positions around meaning and hegemony in museums and how such relationships can be refigured. It looks at how texts have been written in a unique exhibition in South Africa, the William Fehr Collection at the Castle. This Collection is unique in that the specific conditions of its sale to the state in 1964 determine its function as a museum within a museum. It is also unique in that its first public showing was as part of the Jan van Riebeeck Tercentenary Festival of 1952, where it formed the bulk of a Historical Exhibition of Arts at the Castle. I examine how meanings are constructed in the Collection, and how these meanings gain authority in abstract terms through conceptualising space in particular ways. I argue that how space is conceptualised forms a site of critical intervention. I counter the notion of absolute space with a commitment to mobile positioning. To do this, I look at how landscape conventions at Table Bay (wellrepresented in the Collection) apparently construct a singular position, extending this into an examination of how meanings have been refigured in museums by a number of conceptual artists. I suggest that this project can be extended into a physical intervention in the form of an audio-tour through the Collection. I have produced such an acoustiguide entitled A Passage through the William Fehr Collection. This thirty-five minute tour is available from the Professional Officer of the William Fehr Collection at the Castle.

The multi-media paintings and works on paper which form the basis of my work are in essence an attempt to subvert the production of identities in contemporary mass-culture. In employing the term "mass-culture" I wish to refer to a network of interlinked forms which dominate contemporary existence. The mass-media are commonly cited as the major players with respect to mass-culture, entrenching commodity-fetishism and systems of stereotypes which play a vital role in determining social norms. These "stereotypes" are continually being adapted in order to facilitate the illusion of being new, relevant and fashionable. At the same time this process encourages an insatiable appetite for new images and fashions, to the extent that culture and fashion converge. Despite the fact that these mass-cultural stereotypes appear to be in a constant state of flux, it is important to realise that the vast majority of these changes are changes in appearance alone. The mind-sets behind the masks remain largely unchanged, as too do the aspirations and fears these images embody.