A South African Artist Explores the Family Archive as Art
Blue Mary: Handwork for Keeping the Home
Notes: An exhibition catalog of a multimedia project by the South African artist, published in an edition of 100 signed, numbered copies. Her first book and her first major exhibition.
"Handwork for Keeping the Home is an exhibition about curating an archive. The keeper/curator is the artist herself, the archive, her familial relationships as they reveal and hide themselves in the collected fragments of three generations.. All these, sometimes disparate, bits and pieces have been worked into a narrative, punctuated by startling, occasionally shocking interventions. She literally digs up the past, reforms old memories, marks on her own body the patterns of her dearest connections. She has not only assembled a collection she has been an active agent in creating it. The ceramics, the embroideries and the book itself are the obvious works of creative construction, the excavation of a family grave, the sewing of thread into flesh, the gendering of family inheritance are the more subtle acts of creativity."—artist's statement.
9-1/2 by 11-3/4 inches. About 150 pages (unpaginated). In the online Dictionary of South African Artist's Books.
Edition + Condition: First edition (first printing). A fine copy in printed wrappers. One of 100 signed, numbered copies.
Publication: Capetown, South Africa: Scan Shop, 2000.
ISBN: 9780620266161
Item No: #307220
Price: $250