Wim Botha: The River

Botha’s characters, with their eroded or skeletal forms, find their antecedents in the artist’s previous works such as Studies for the Garden of Earthly Delights. Botha’s figuration makes allusions to forms of existence beyond linear time. Blurring the distinction between inception and annihilation, his carved entities appear to offer acknowledgement of the temporary nature of the physical form while accepting the idea of an eternity of formless presence.

‘We resist mortality so profoundly, and at least in western culture, we don’t deal with images of the dead body. When you think of skeletons or the remains of the human form, it’s often represented and seen as something gory or unpleasant. Whereas, in these works, I feel the opposite in animating them, bringing them to life; a quiet life, true to the character that they exude.’

‘In many cultures, the idea of a river approximates a timeline where the flow of something through time and space becomes meaningful for us as an image. The river is useful in trying to visualise something hyper abstract like the passing of time. It cannot be seen, it cannot be experienced; it can only be seen by the traces that it leaves.’