Ringing the Museum

Bronze, 2008

For an exhibition at a Sienna museum, a large bronze object in the shape of a bell’s tongue was created and installed. Nearly three metres high and able to be swung, the tongue references the enormous cathedral bells that are prominent throughout the city. These traditionally played an important part in local communities, alerting them to celebrations and danger. In this installation, walls were built around the tongue to replace a bell’s skirt, allowing for the possibility of the museum to be rung. This would destroy the walls and damage the building.

The Pervasive Echo

Performance, 2009

An opera singer (Kathleen Burger) performed a song by 19th century singing sensation Jenny Lind, while under hypnosis. This was staged at Castle Clinton in Battery Park (New York), the site of Lind’s first concert in the U.S. The performance references two prominent figures from the late 19th century: The Swedish Nightingale, Jenny Lind, and the fictional manipulative hypnotist Svengali, an invention of Victorian author George Du Maurier from the hugely popular novel Trilby (1894). In addition to questioning artistic agency, the performance aimed to emphasize how history is filtered through popular fiction.

Performers: Kathleen Burger & John Healerchi

The Pervasive Echo was facilitated by the Museum for African Art in New York for Performa 09.

Open Studio

Mixed Media, 2007

For the purposes of Sacks’ MFA practical exhibition, a staged studio was set up in what was then a communal artist’s space in Commercial Street, Cape Town. The installation was contrived to appear as if 2 years’ worth of work had been made there. Later in the year, another Open Studio installation was set up in a gallery space (Cortex Athletico in Bourdeaux). A construction within the gallery was fabricated to look like a working artist’s studio and filled with different kinds of texts relating to exhibitions, describing real and imagined artworks.

Don’t Panic

2 channel projection, 2005

On 21 March 2004, the public holiday Human Right’s Day in South Africa, a plane was hired to write the words ‘Don’t Panic’ in the sky over the Cape Town city bowl. The Don’t blew away long before the Panic. Video footage of the event has been made into a two channel DVD.

Seen here are photographic stills of the public intervention.

Stuffed Pigeons

Taxidermy rock pigeons, 2005

Several taxidermy pigeons were combined to make a series of large birds that were placed in various spots in Cape Town.