ADAMASTOR (maquette), 2014
Bronze on Granite / Resin
30cm
Edition of 12
430 x 280 x 220 mm
10 kg
140cm
Edition of 12
1700 x 1050 x 500 mm
62kg
The sailed figure of Adamastor (2014) explores an internal conflict experienced by South African white masculinity in its lived legacy of both colonial victory and oppression. Titled after the phantom-like guardian of the Cape of Storms, this sculpture captures a stoic figure in his struggle to battle through unseen torrents of water and wind.
Adorned with the jutting sails representative of Jan Van Riebeeck’s ships Dromedaris, Reijger and Goede Hoop, Adamastor suggests the heroic hardship faced by seafarers in their attempts to reach the South African coastline. Beneath this figure’s battle to hold fast in its fight forward there does, however, lie a complex struggle. The sculpture speaks to the unresolved experience of self faced by the colonising body.
Unable to fully reject or celebrate a personal and public heritage steeped in equal measures of triumph and defeat, Adamastor’s physical make-up evokes a state of imperishable resistance and perpetual conflict. This sculpture’s defiant nature in both representation and construction proposes a disjunctive platform in which these very different states of experience, being, and material collide.
