The Butcher
Provenance : Johans Borman Fine Art, Cape Town.
Exhibited : Johans Borman Fine Art, Cape Town, Persona, 11 October to 26 November 2011.
Literature : Johans Borman (ed.) (2011) Persona, Cape Town: Johans Borman Fine Art. Another example from this edition illustrated in colour on page 111, 113 and 115.
Notes : Accompanied by a copy of the exhibition catalogue Persona (2011).
“I try to make a universal statement, but the work grows out of the insanities here (...) I don’t know if the work would be so raw if I wasn’t South African”.1
The Butcher , The Doorman and The Hunter are part of a series of eleven works created by the artist in 2011 in an ongoing response to reading Anne Applebaum’s harrowing book Gulag.
Gulag laid bare the associated moral complicity of those working in association with Stalin’s concentration camps with Brown continuing the metaphor in a post-apartheid idiom.
The Gulag stands as a symbol of a large, uncaring, inflexible and unwieldy dehumanising structure or national state commandeering and corrupting complicit recruits at its behest.
Brown’s figures, imbued with physical menace, punctuated with spikes, armoured in heavy uniforms become symbols of sadistic phallic malice.
1. Sue Williamson. (1989) Resistance Art in South Africa. London: Catholic Institute for International Relations. Page 56.
