Infant ,2013
Estimations(basse-haute) :
Exhibited : Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, Penumbra, June/ July 2013.
Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, Cradle, 2015.
Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, In the Weave, 28 January to 29 March, 2014.
Literature : cf. Neil Dundas and Julia Charlton (2014) Walter Oltmann: In the Weave, Johannesburg: Standard Bank Gallery publication, other works from the series illustrated pages 58, 92 and 93.
Notes : Walter Oltmann has in the past 5 years made a considerable body of works in woven wire, drawing and print mediums, under the title Cradle, which he says ‘inevitably reminds one of the Cradle of Humankind, a name given to the Sterkfontein area in Gauteng where fossil discoveries were made of early hominids’. In his introduction to the book A Search for Origins: Science, History and South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind, Philip Bonner (2007) notes: ‘The Cradle [...] provides a lens through which to view and comprehend a series of absolutely pivotal and formative moments of South African prehistory and history’.
Adopting this idea of ‘cradle’ as a ‘lens through which to view’ histories, Oltmann presents wire woven landscape images in circular formats that allude to views seen through a telescope, underscoring the process of looking and examining. He draws on correlations between images of fossils and woven forms such as lace and crochet work. Similarly, and more closely related to our own time period, the wire woven works of anonymous children reflect on the ‘formative moments’ of individuals who once lived but about whom we have little or no knowledge. ‘Cradle’ presents a melancholic contemplation on these lives and the character of trauma that their histories assume.
Source: Goodman Gallery.
