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2017: The Hanging Garden

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“…Johan Thom’s Hanging Garden, 2016: two bronze feet set atop a glass vitrine on a wooden terrace covered in an off-white polyurethane sludge, its drained, white figure speaking to the changeable politics raging outside the park” (Sean O’ Toole, Artforum: https://www.artforum.com/picks/nirox-foundation-sculpture-park-60507)

A contemporary sculpture in lush garden.

The famed hanging gardens of Babylon serve as first reference. One of the seven wonders of the ancient world, an ideal garden bequeathed to us by the very same civilization that also gave us a mythical tower, and a name: Babylon, cacophonous place of sin and confusion. Today the name conjures up beauty and unease in equal measure.

Our utopian dreams of the garden as space persist but are here perversely rendered in three dimensional form as a messy, material affair. A nightmarish garden inside the ideal space of the Nirox Sculpture park located in the Cradle of Humanity, just outside Johannesburg. But this garden is small and consists of weeds kept inside a massive glass vitrine; a pair of feet (the artists’) cast in bronze placed atop the glass box; a modernist inspired terrace made from wood and mixed media; and, finally, a large mass of polyurethane foam exploding, bulging, oozing and dripping all over the entire structure and its surrounds.

The artist is present throughout the work: the glass vitrine’s dimensions are drawn directly from my body, as is the total weight of the polyurethane foam and bronze feet combined (103 kg). Closer inspection reveals a peculiar, personal detail: at the time of making the mould of my feet I was wearing my favourite household shoes – flip flops (or ‘Crocs’ to use the common brand name).

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A modernist inspired terrace serves as the base upon which the drama is played out. Le Corbusier in pine and saligna: clean horizontal and vertical lines, the entire form literally hangs from a central core of four wooden pillars, with modular sections that can easily be fitted, modified and moved. But this is Africa and the structure immediately reminds of the familiar appendages of homes, lodges and hotels the continent over: the ‘deck’ that extend the home into the untamed space of the veld – a space reserved primarily for luxury, leisure and looking (breakfast, sundowners, bring your binoculars, you might see something wild out there).

The glass vitrine is the ever present sparring partner of the museum visitor. The cool air of detachment and disembodiment surrounds its very presence. A foil hidden in plain sight: protect and (pre)serve. This will last you will not. It is made with surgical precision and contained in a crisp polished stainless steel outer frame.

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And the polyurethane foam? It is a synthetic material predominantly used in the building industry to plug gaps and to keep structures such as wooden walls in place. If not exposed to direct sunlight it has a lifetime of seventy years (or longer). It is fire retardant and sealed here with a layer of UV protection. Nothing can disguise the fact that this industrial material, that it will not last as long as glass, bronze. This material is the very antitheses of the relative, though persistent, wholesomeness and naturalness of the garden and the ideals that underpin it.

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To end, a question. Can something not be both celebration and critique? Is it not possible to love the complex mess we are part of and to still harbor serious reservations about it too?

In this moment in this country.

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    • PERFORMANCE
      • 2003: Bind/Ontbind Series
      • 2004-6: Outpost Series
      • 2006: The Theory of Gravity
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      • 2013: For Linnaeus
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      • …other performances
    • VIDEO/INSTALLATIONS
      • 2002: The pencil test series
      • 2003: Violence and Happiness
      • 2004: The Labyrinth
      • 2005: The Minotaur Series 12
      • 2006: The Theory of Evolution
      • 2006: The Theory of Flight
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      • 2008: Challenging Mud (After Kazuo Shiraga)
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      • 2008: The Theory of Displacement
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      • 2010: blood rites/ eat your words
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      • 2010: Illumination
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      • 2019: Recital: Decoy
    • OBJECTS
      • 2007: Looking for Lucy
      • 2007: Molotovmammas
      • 2007: Philistine rules/ Did you know?
      • 2007: The OK Revolution
      • 2009: Vessel – Perfect Lovers
      • 2010: Gold works
      • 2010: Knobkierie
      • 2010: Recital (Lend me your ears)
      • 2010: Songbirds
      • 2011: Workhorse (with Guy Du Toit)
      • 2012: Fallen – monument for throwing…
      • 2013: The Animal Series
        • …….Collaborative large-scale etchings
        • …….Drawings
        • …….Mahout (video)
        • …….Photographs
        • …….Sculptures with Guy Du Toit
      • 2014-15: Faust the African Series
      • 2016: Promises, promises…
      • 2016: Selfportrait as an ass
      • 2016: Selfportrait with skull
      • 2017: The Hanging Garden
      • 2019: Houseboat
      • 2020: Houseboat #2
    • ABOUT
      • Artist statement
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      • Shortened CV
      • Interviews
        • 2003: Interview with Carine Zaayman
        • 2006: Interview with Willem Boshoff
        • 2007: Interview with David Koloane (2007)
        • 2008: Interview with Peter Machen
        • 2008: Radio Papesse Interview as part of ‘.za: Young Art From South Africa’
        • 2009: Johan Thom interviewed by Sarah Claire Picton
        • 2010: The ghosts wish to remember: Interview with Petra Zemljič
        • 2018: The Aestheticized Interview with Johan Thom (South Africa) – Kisito Assangni for ArtDependence
      • Authored
        • David Koloane (1938–2019) – Artforum International
        • Kendell Geers at the Steven Friedman, London
        • Life intimidating art, The Diplomat, Sept/Oct 2007
        • Roger Ballen at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, 2007
        • The sleeping monster produces reasons : Diane Victor
        • Santu Mofokeng (2010)
        • The sense of fresh air (2010)
        • Taming the Trojan Horse: Disarming the Politics of Otherness in a Postcolonial (African) Context
    • CONTACT
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