Rudyard Kipling’s 1899 poem “The White Man’s Burden” contains the phrase “heathen Folly,” referring to the resistance of colonized populations to the values of their colonizers. The sentiment reflects an age when colonial culture sought to impose Western values of Christianity and civilization onto other nations—and their citizens’ rebellion against the Western intruders. Sculptor Alan Alborough’s seminal work Heathen Wet Lip from 1997 revisited this notion. The work first appeared in Graft, the Colin Richards-curated show that was part of the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale.
Alborough’s work featured sections of preserved elephant carcasses. Dried and salted elephant ears were hung from steel rods attached to four white plastered structural columns in the center space of the South African National Gallery in Cape Town. The stumps of elephant legs were displayed upside down on metal shelves between the columns. The extremities of the elephant’s body, the ears and feet, suggest the whole of an animal’s physique, but the space between the columns was vacant, with no body for the parts to belong to.
The work took apart the binaries of “heathen” and “Christian,” “savage” and “civilized,” as they were applied by colonizing forces like Britain, the Netherlands, and Germany to the Southern African region. Heathen Wet Lip, the odd title of Alborough’s installation, is an anagram of “white elephant”: a term that refers to a structure, usually large and expensive, marked by a degree of previous excess, which has outlived its usefulness. One might think here of the governmental model of colonialism that the white man brought to Africa.
On this occasion Alborough sourced the materials for his work, the elephant parts, from the Kruger National Park in Mpumalanga, in the northeast of South Africa, which has to cull a number of these majestic animals each year in order to preserve the environment. In their search for the young tree branches on which they feed, the elephants, which once roamed freely over the entire country but are now restricted to game reserves, can trample and destroy large areas of bush.
At other times Alborough has found the ready-made elements for his installations in office supply and hardware stores. An interest in building machines to make “art” led to WYSIWYG (2005), ten small units that used metal and briny water and the principle of corrosion to create organic drawings on paper. Whatever his choice of material, his acute sense of aesthetics always results in an elegant and often playful result. Critic Kathryn Smith writes that his work “confounds and amuses in equal measure.”
What is certain is that the artist himself refuses to talk about what his intentions are in making any particular piece, believing that anything he might say would interfere with the viewer’s perception and reception of the work.
Heathen Wet Lip (detail) 1997
Dried and salted elephant ears and feet, rope, chain, pulleys, clamps, canteen tables
Collection of the Iziko South African National Gallery
Photographer: Michael Hall
© Alan Alborough
Heathen Wet Lip 1997
Dried and salted elephant ears and feet, rope, chain, pulleys, clamps, canteen tables
Collection of the Iziko South African National Gallery
Photographer: Jean Brundrit
© Alan Alborough