Public Art
Little Mamma Africa, permanent slate installation at Atteridgeville Super Stadium, Pretoria (2010)
Little Mamma Africa, permanent slate installation at Atteridgeville Super Stadium, Pretoria (2010)
Photos by Elizabeth Olivier-Kahlua
We had a commission to make a sculpture for the soccer world cup for a soccer stadium in Atteridge ville, with a relatively small budget we had to erect a piece that would work outside. The open air diminishes any sculpture that might look big on the inside of your studio. I made a maquette for the studio which they up scaled with a lazer machine that we have built. And then the 2 artists that stayed Francois Visser and Steven Delport modelled the larger work from which we made a mould. Instead of casting the work in a material we packed it in stone and cast or solidified the inside with concrete. Little mamma relates to the idea of gift giving, that art does not only exist in the market economy but also in the gift economy. Little mama is sort of humorous reference, to something we are all familiar with, more so the venus of Wilendorf than an idealised female figure. I found the idealised female figure to be something we can't work with as it might be read as male gaze. The younger mama read as something without any political or gender connotations or negative in any fact.