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Work ⟩1990s ⟩Tortoise 1995

About the Work

On my second visit to South Africa in 1994, I was taken by my host to a game park outside Pretoria where, among other animals I was shown a very large tortoise. The following day I was taken to a cemetery in Pretoria and shown the last resting place of Nazi sympathiser, the chief proponent of apartheid and first President of South Africa, Hendrik Verwoerd. His inward-looking politics had made his country a pariah state. Verwoerd had been assassinated in 1966 on a second attempt.
The grave was marked with a bust of Verwoerd. This I combined with the tortoise in an attempt to make a more appropriate memorial.