The Altar to the Lost Conversations, 2018, Individually hand painted cups, sugar, bronze, in a custom hardwood house and acrylic
'Newman' - bronze monkey in the roof window, edition of 7
'Sally' - brass doll with hand painted mask mounted on hardwood plinth
"In response to the theme of the community and its values being lost, I looked into my suburban childhood growing up in South Africa and realized that unlike then, I feel almost entirely alienated from my neighbors - and to some degree feel responsible for fostering that feeling out of not wanting to be bother to anyone.
I do not think that my experience was unique to South Africa or my neighborhood and I looked to the 'cup of sugar' as an almost universal representation of being happy to call upon your neighbors for help, for companionship and a sense of belonging.
Sugar itself being a preservative used to extend the life of things to turn quickly and spoil, I decided to fill my house with a teetering, ever-growing collection of cups overfilled with sugar to act as a ghosted monument to lost conversations.
They have not been erased from time, but misplaced - which is more or less how I see an increasingly lonely society's need for human interaction.
It was also important to me that the tea cups could be made and fired in Thailand. In a show highlighting community, I wanted to be able to give back to one, if I could.
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