Source work:
0806/85
Roger Fry (1866-1934)
Still Life with Omega Flowers
1919
Oil on canvas
Collecting Specimens - Corina Lemmer
Corina Lemmer (b.1961)
Collecting Specimens
Water-colour on paper; copper wire and beads
R7 050
"Once upon a time, three artistic tourists visited KZN. They each bought a wire flower. The British tourist was the curator of an art museum and researched the artist, journalled her own experiences and did a botanical study of the wire and bead flower. The German tourist did a study of the wire-and-bead specimen as well as of other things that interested her on this trip. The Italian tourist put her flower away and carried on having lots of fun."
The theme of this work is art/craft as a vehicle for crossing cultural barriers, as well as man's impulse to order his world.
The three tourists saw the crafted flowers as a way to reach the real inhabitants of the country they visited. Like their forefathers the botanists, who collected plant specimens to take home and who categorised these plants, the three ladies also categorised and documented what they came across in their search for typical African souvenirs to take home.
They are themselves, however, being categorised by the actual artist as she imagines what each of them would buy and how they would respond to their experiences here. The artist, who pretends to be the tourist-artist, peeps out from under cover in the border of the work, reminding us that she also needs to be classified: How does she go about making art? Is she a good or mediocre artist? What is her style, her themes? What kind of person is she? Is she really an African?
In ages past, the collecting of botanical specimens enabled people to communicate across class, geographical and cultural divides. In the same way an appreciation of art and craft collapses differences between people: educational, social and cultural.
When we start categorising other people and their art/craft, the difficulties of communicating across these barriers become apparent: the three tourists thought they bought typical African craft pieces, but they were made by a woman of European descent, and inspired by a British painting of origami influenced paper flowers!
Similarly, we get our lines crossed when the craftpiece, the symbol for communication across various divides, is made from copper telephone wires, the theft of which hampers communication....