Lot 74: Sandile Zulu (South African, born 1962) Planetary Conception 5 unframed

Planetary Conception 5
signed 'Sandile Zulu' and dated '2005' (lower right); bears title (verso)
fire, water and red cotton fabric on canvas
149 x 298cm (58 11/16 x 117 5/16in).
unframed

Exhibited:
London, October Gallery, 'Sandile Zulu: Fire this time', 30th June – 30th July 2005;
London, October Gallery, 'Angaza Afrika', 15 May – 26th July 2008.

Illustrated:
C. Spring (ed.), Angaza Afrika, (London, 2008), pgs. 328-329.

Sandile Zulu was born in 1962, in Ixopo, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and now lives and works in Johannesburg. Since graduating from the University of the Witwatersrand in the early 1990s he has exhibited extensively, locally as well as in the United States, Germany, France, Sweden, Scotland and the Seychelles. He has received many international awards and is represented in public, corporate and private collections around the world, including the South African National Gallery.

Zulu's paints are the harnessed natural effects of fire, water, earth and air. His brushes are both natural, organic materials (pumpkin runners, leaves, roots) and synthetic urban debris (wire, scrap metal, paper). As canvas he uses materials sourced from his local environment, from cotton and leather, to plaster, perspex and drum hide. When Zulu began working with fire, in 1990, he saw its action as an allegory for the violence that surrounded him. As the apartheid state employed fire and firearms as tools of repression, he began to experiment with the media as a form of resistance, a revolutionary act – literally a way of "fighting fire with fire". Responding to what he called the "winds of change" in the following years, he began to incorporate wind, air and water into his processes. He explains:

"Fire and water, wind and soil allude to life, to creation and destruction, to colonisation and decolonisation, to revolution and liberation, to purgation and cleansing, to purification and renewal"

For the 'Fire this time' exhibition, Zulu had been working with huge canvases, on which he burnt forms by laying down various materials on the fabric, including pumpkin runners and leaves, (resulting in organic, interlocking forms), small wire triangles (giving a cross-hatching effect), and circles of paper (leaving polka dots). For the first time, he introduced elements of colour by sewing onto the canvas minute squares of red fabric, heightening the decorative patterns, and leaving one wondering if the canvases are bleeding.

We are most grateful to the October Gallery for their assistance in the preparation of this catalogue entry.