Sunset At Windemere (Afrika Mayibuye) (Sic) ,1957
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Notes : Sunset at Windemere (Afrika Mayibuye) is perhaps one of Peter Clarke’s oddest works, yet it is not a surprise considering his penchant for humour. Those who know the now late artist and his work, might remember him for his diligence and often humourous observation of the everyday. With their quiet and yet whimsical painterly touches, Clarke’s distinctive saturated palette and bold contours, often appear misleadingly passive. He is sometimes referred to as an heir to movements such as German Expressionism, the Harlem Renaissance etc., but rarely to the haunting influence of African sculptural traditions which runs through his work. The Machiavellian wit that clandestinely pops up in his oeuvre, depicts reality with a bold disregard of naturalistic conventions. Sunset at Windemere (Afrika Mayibuye) represents a rather earlier Clarke, almost emboldened by his era’s journalis ticpreoccupations.It depicts three men defecating in a row of rickety, open toilet cubicles. Completed in 1957, at the height of apartheid’s forced removals, it portrays the tragedy and neglect faced by the residents of the now lost community of Windermere. At first glance, the painting draws us in with the warm, liquid colours of the sunset, into what deceptively becomes a comical representation. But Clarke depicts something more than just the spatial sanitary ecology of apartheid South Africa. He reveals the monotony of racial oppression with pathos and reluctant comic ease. Upon closer reading, he unveils a spatio-existential tragicomedy, where space and race correlatively define the logics of incongruity and the daily naturalization of destitution. Thus his subtitle Afrika Mayibuye (Africa Return) presupposes a nostalgic yearning for a different sociality and time.
Athi Mongezeleli Joja
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