Wilma Cruise

The  Alice Sequence constitutes a series of exhibitions exploring the nature of the animal-human interface.

In sculpture, drawing, print and word, the curious interface between Alice in Wonderland and the animals that inhabit her dream world is explored.

In Wonderland the animals have agency. They speak. But Alice does not always understand what is happening. She is pushed and pulled hither and thither in a confusion of understanding. “Who are you?” asks the caterpillar. A little while later the pigeon rephrases the question: “What are you?” To neither has Alice the answer.

The caterpillar’s question is significant. Who is Alice…. and by extrapolation who are we? Are we right to presume our position of superiority in relation to the animals?  Do we really deserve our place on top of the Cartesian pile? It is an ontological question. The drawings, prints and sculptures that make up the Alice Series explore these ideas.

The horse is absent, its presence implied only by the sound of galloping hooves and the cloud of dust they raise. DUST is about erasure, absence and nostalgia.

The scene is set in an emptied landscape where the hum of the desert and the buzzing of flies disturbs a heavy silence. Softly at first and then growing in intensity, the drum of galloping hooves is heard. It grows in intensity as the unseen stampede approaches. The dust progressively veils the landscape driven by the wind until the moment when the invisible herd passes, everything is obliterated. The sound sweeps around and fades as the dust, driven by the wind, slowly clears to reveal the veld returned to silence.

On the second screen a truncated image of horseʼs legs, twitch in convulsive repetitive movements. DUST loops in endless repetetition.

‘Setting up my sculptures in the gardens of Wildekrans Country House gave me an opportunity to see my works in their rightful setting. My sculptures are habitually shown in the interior of a gallery and it takes some imagination to visualise them outdoors. But at Wildekrans my works find their natural outdoor home. Set in the gardens of the historic farm, works such as ‘Adam and Eve before the Fall’ and ‘I Can’t See With Mirror’ find a context comfortably in accordance with their slightly larger than life-size scale and organic clay materiality.

It was the vision of owners Alison Green and Barry Gould that foresaw how these works could fit into the garden setting. This is not surprising since Green and Gould  have collected my work over the years. ‘SID’ and a flock of six ceramic sheep have graced their gardens for some time.

But Green and Gould have a gone a step further than just displaying my sculptures in a garden setting. Noting that I love to play with word and text they took the unusual decision to offer the walls of their historic home as a palette and page for me to write on. Textual aphorisms play a vital part in my work so Green decided that these creative jottings would enrich and inform the works in the garden. This gave me a chance to write on the walls and in so doing I could reveal the thought processes that lie behind the creation of the sculptures, ideas that are usually confined to my diary pages. At Wildekrans they have been given exposure where they can play their role ng and sometimes explaining the meaning of the sculptures. ‘