WILLIAM KENTRIDGE

(B. 1955)

Office Love
2001

Footnotes

Provenance
Annandale Galleries, Sydney
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2004

Exhibited
Sydney, Annandale Galleries, William Kentridge: Learning The Flute / Automatic Writing, 2004, illustrated on the cover in colour
Sydney, S.H. Ervin Gallery, 2004: The Year in Art, 2004
Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, William Kentridge Tapestries, 2007-2008, p. 65, no. 17, another example exhibited and illustrated in colour
Sydney, University of Technology Sydney, 2010-2015, work on loan to the University

Another example of this edition is held in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia.



Incisively political and yet profoundly poetic, Office Love belongs to a series of tapestries which William Kentridge began in 2001. This present work is from an edition of three that were executed between 2001 and 2005; the first edition of which is held in the permanent collection of the prominent Philadelphia Museum of Art. The monumental scale and intricate execution of this present work, along with the foundations of cultural and historic sensibility, sets Kentridge apart as an artist who has achieved an extraordinary, compelling contribution to the disciplines of 21st century art.

Office Love illustrates an intricate map of Johannesburg with almost life size silhouettes dramatically set against the cartographical formality of the chart. The duality of his composition is arresting; the darkness of his silhouettes, or protagonists, as they so boldly encompass the composition, rest atop the delicate pastel threads delicately woven to construct a map of the city, in an almost collaged fashion. The silhouettes depict a stocky businessman with a typewriter for a head, who purposefully approaches three pieces of what one might decipher as 'feminine' office furniture, the largest of which is a transcriber's table. Interestingly, typewriters started to become standardised in the 1890s, shortly after the years in which Johannesburg was founded and developed as a city. It might be considered that everyday objects such as typewriters recall an early 20th-century colonial world as perceived by the artist that would be apparent to a child growing up in the 50s and 60s. The title Office Love contributes to the assertion of male and female receptivity and possibly contains a more profound meaning; perhaps the depiction of the stocky male advancing is sexual tension or perhaps it is simply progress in today's age.

Born in Johannesburg in 1955, William Kentridge has become one of the most highly regarded and sought after living contemporary artists. He has produced a searing interdisciplinary body of work ranging from drawing, film, animation, theatre, sculpture, tapestry and even opera, that explores themes of colonial oppression and social conflict, loss and reconciliation, alongside the transient nature of both personal and cultural memory. He seeks to transmute sobering political events into powerful poetic allegories that resonate profoundly, still to this present day.

Setting his oeuvre in context, Kentridge was the son of prominent anti-apartheid lawyers; Sir Sydney Kentridge and Felicia Geffen. His father famously defended Nelson Mandela during the Treason Trials of 1956 – 1961, and his mother was a highly respected human rights advocate who set up an organisation to provide free legal support to marginalised members of South African society, that is still in service today. This political background and family lineage proved vital to shaping Kentridge's artistic career. Upon graduating from the prestigious University of Witwatersrand with a bachelor's degree in politics and African studies, Kentridge enrolled at the Johannesburg Art Foundation, where he studied Fine Arts. His interest in African history and politics remained with him and influenced his work. Due to his parents' involvement in South African politics, Kentridge grew up acutely aware of the injustices in the country, and art became a form of expression for him.

Reputed perhaps more widely are his compelling animations that reveal the process of their own creation by showing how individual frames have been drawn, adapted, erased, and otherwise transformed from one image to the next; but William Kentridge introduced the medium of tapestry into his repertoire as another way to tell difficult and harrowing stories akin to his native homeland and the period in which he grew up in. Like his animations, Kentridge's tapestries are also developed from his drawings, the first media his artistic practise evolved from. These preparatory collaged drawings conjure shadowy figures from ripped construction paper which he then collaged onto the web-like background of nineteenth-century atlas maps of Europe and Johannesburg. He began making tapestries in collaboration with the Stephens Tapestry Studio, run by the mother and daughter team of Marguerite Stephens and Tina Weavind, whom he would collaborate with for 24 years. The tapestries are woven from mohair harvested from Angora goats farmed in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, and in Lesotho. The raw mohair was processed and dyed in northern Eswatini before being transferred to the looms at the studio in Diepsloot on the outskirts of Johannesburg. The mapping of geography across many South African cities to produce these tapestries, perhaps speaks to Kentridge's heritage and underlying political preoccupations that resonated in his art.

Kentridge's tapestries, which included the first edition of Office Love, were the subject of an important exhibition dedicated solely to this medium organised by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2007. Exhibited were eleven works from a multiple of series that showcase similar silhouetted figures set against the backdrop of maps, carrying bundles and belongings as they move forward. The backgrounds of the beautifully woven and embroidered maps, along with the juxtaposition of hulking figures couldn't be more direct. The curator of the exhibition, Carlos Basualdo, explained, "Kentridge initially thought of his tapestries as 'permanent projections. While they evoke the moving image, his tapestries also illuminate the centrality of drawing in his practice. He uses the language of one medium to talk about another medium, while at the same time dealing with societies that are themselves in a state of transition". (Carlos Basualdo, William Kentridge Tapestries https://philamuseum.org/calendar/exhibition/notationswilliam-kentridge-tapestries, 19 September 2023).

It is plausible to argue that no other South African artist has achieved greater status than William Kentridge. His career has brought him international recognition as one of today's major living artists. This reputation is confirmed by the stature of the global institutions and art museums that have exhibited his work. He has had solo exhibitions including at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, the Chicago Art Institute, the Tate Modern in London and most recently a major retrospective at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

Office Love is an immeasurable example of Kentridge's discipline in the medium of intricate tapestry but also in expression of cultural, political and historical importance that was instrumental to him and his involvement and contribution to art.