Exhibition: Tover Land at Montoro 12, Brussels (2023)

Tover Land is a small body of work in natural ochre on slate, is inspired by nocturnal photographs taken by a motion-sensitive camera in a wilderness area located in the Cape Floral Kingdom in Southern Africa. 

These paintings will be exhibited as part of the Animal Power! exhibition at Montoro12 Gallery in Brussels, opening on 7 September 2023 as part of the Art Brussels week. 

In TOVER LAND (2023), my concern with the demise of the natural world and human responsibility turns to a hopeful story. The series of paintings in natural ochre on slate, is inspired by nocturnal photographs taken by a motion-sensitive camera in a wilderness area located in the Cape Floral Kingdom in Southern Africa. 

This hidden place is a precious space that has been consciously maintained as a true wilderness area for many years. Instead of seeing the land as there to serve human interests, its guardians have fostered a reciprocal relationship of love, participation and respect with the land. This has allowed the land to recover and restore its endemic plant and animal life. But for the custodians it is more than the land alone recovering its indigineity. Their relationship with the land is a nuanced and interwoven intimacy; “… it is a conscious indigineity… as the land becomes more indigenous, so we must too”. 



Within this delicate interplay between human and the natural world, the motion-sensitive camera offered an enchanting view into other-than-human life. It revealed how nature is quietly alive and evolving while we are asleep. And it showed a glimpse of the strange and wonderful native creatures that have almost magically and out of thin air appeared on the land: Bat-eared Foxes, the Aardvark and Rooikat, to name a few. 

These night images awakened a very ancient indescribable remembrance in me; a feeling of the mysterious and unfathomable intelligence of the natural world. In keeping with the theme of mystery, these images demanded a unique painterly response from me. Even though the paintings are in my usual naturally sourced ochre, they have a very different quality to my signature works. South African poet, Peter Anderson, perhaps describes the paintings most succinctly when he says that they are “magical; spectral and full of the feeling of the photographic negative, [they evoke the memory of a] retinal afterglow”. To cite the image source, each painting is signed with the temperature, moon phase, the date and time as per the photographic reference I used.

This visceral imprint, this knowledge of creatures living and thriving amongst us, is not only burnt into the fabric of my eyes but through an innocent process of illustration has become a part of my internal landscape. Within the ferocious backdrop of mass degradation of natural places, remembering these creatures and this magical land soothes my heart somehow. I hope it will yours too.