Install a bath in the gallery.
Bathe only there for the duration of the exhibition.
Don’t change the water.
Photograph the bath mat every day.

A remake of Jannis Kounellis’ Tragedia Civile (1975), drawing on the history of South African hero Francois Pienaar to reimagine the work in a contemporary South African context.

In Kounellis’ original, gold leaf lines the wall, recalling ‘the past golden age in contrast to the disordered and compromised present’ by invoking Byzantine art. In front of the wall is a coat rack with overcoat and hat – illustrating in its melancholy banality the limitations of the individual in relation to the demands of their environment, while an antiquated paraffin lamp on a shelf lights the scene.

Instead of Kounellis’ coat rack and gold leaf, a bowl of Lay’s Lightly Salted is placed on offer in front of a wall covered in flattened chip packets. On a shelf, a mobile phone is on charge, receiving an almost constant stream of news updates from numerous news channels and Twitter accounts, on an endless array of topics of competing urgency.

The title of the work is derived from the front page of The Sunday Independent, 25 June 1995, which features an image of Nelson Mandela handing Pienaar the Rugby World Cup trophy – an image that has become iconic in South Africa as a symbol of reconciliation and unity – accompanied by the headline ‘Triumph of the Rainbow Warriors’.

The chips make reference to the arrival of Lay’s in South Africa following end of Apartheid and the lifting of sanctions. Lay’s Lightly Salted came to represent a new global sophistication for middle class South Africans to aspire to, based on Western consumer culture, once again with Pienaar at the fore as the star of Lay’s advertising.  

Linocuts and monotypes, taken from my archive, torn into strips and assembled to form a stack.