Robben Island III

Title: Robben Island III
Medium: Three colour lithograph
Paper size: 36 x 37.5 cm
Image size: 30 x 28 cm
Edition size: 25

"After spending time living and working as an artist-in-residence on the low-lying outcrop off the coast of South Africa called Robben Island, on which Nelson Mandela and other famous political prisoners were held, I begun to construct a series of images in which objects and fragments found there act both as evidence and reliquaries. Like fragments of the true cross, they are at once insignificant and holy, discards as well as witnesses to the ongoing, shifting nature of our lives and our histories. I create precisely drawn objects over and through the spontaneous application of painted grounds, thus constantly undoing the clarity of the drawing. Although memory, history, and loss are embedded in these images, so too is the luminosity of their presence." Paul Stopforth