Pinky Pinky: Eye
Provenance : Strauss & Co, Cape Town, 12 October 2015, lot 584.
The Tasso Foundation Collection of Important South African Art assembled by the Late Giulio Bertrand of Morgenster Estate.
Notes : The present lot forms part of an important suite of paintings made between 2002 and 2004. Collectively titled Pinky Pinky, the series takes its name from an ambiguous figure of legend said to prey on adolescent children at school toilets. The project originated out of a chance encounter with a speech prepared by Thapelo Monyaki, a friend of the artist’s son, Alexander Richards, on this human-animal figure for a school project. ‘It so happened that I was giving an art talk to school kids a few days later, and I encouraged them to tell me who Pinky Pinky was, what it looked like, how it acted. They all had their versions, which I then translated into paintings. I relied a lot on the materiality of the painted surface, which is thick and fleshy, and into which I stuck plastic body parts like fake scars, wounds, eyes, fingernails, teeth … The manner in which they’re painted muddles figure and ground distinctions, so that the image appears to be emerging from the pink paint surface.’¹ The series is consistent with the artist’s long-term interest in formlessness, both as a philosophical idea and operational pursuit in painting allowing Siopis to create a tension between reference (figuration) and materiality. A wall text for the Pinky Pinky series in the artist’s 2014 retrospective exhibition at the South African National Gallery further elaborated: ‘The series investigates personal and public narratives around fear and trauma in South Africa, giving forms to things that seem impossible to speak about directly.’1
1. Gerrit Olivier (ed) (2014) Penny Siopis: Time and Again, Johannesburg: Wits Press, pages 141 and 144.
