CURRENT PROJECT
GODDESSES AND SUPERHEROES
Ann Gollifer Exhibited at the Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg, July 2009 all works on German Print over laid with screen, lino ink, acrylic, oil, cotton thread Botswana panels:1200x1200mm.
Goddesses:760x1800mm. Super Heroes:approx.900x800mm.
I overprint fabric with images from my collection of lino cuts that refer to my everyday experiences; the things I see, images that reflect the society I live in, its beauty as well as its ugliness. I began working on the pieces in this show in 2007. The three Botswana panels on German print were completed first. German print, leteisi in Setswana, represents Botswana, the place I have lived and worked for the last 24 years and that is now my home. It has strong cultural significance in terms of women and their status in the home as well as in the public sphere.
The Goddesses were begun while I was reading Ovid's Metamorphosis. Ovid's writing brought to mind our need to humanise nature, combining it with our own to create beings that protect us from the terrors within and without ourselves. I decided to make a series of goddesses. Each piece of fabric was first screen printed with images taken from the lino cuts and then overlayed with my body outline as a starting point. Using my own outline makes the goddesses self portraits but because it is only an outline it can represent all women.
After the goddesses were complete I felt it necessary to explore the notion of male energy, so began the Super Heroes, choosing figures that have a personal meaning for me, interspersed with everyone's favourite comic strip heroes. The characteristics of our contemporary Super Heroes can be related directly back to the Greek gods, their strength and fallibility. It is interesting to think about historical figures like the Three Chiefs (the founding fathers of Botswana) and see how time gathers around them a "god status".
