Termites

One of the systems in nature that I find truly fascinating is that of termites. The beauty of the African landscape with its termite mounds is well known. The order and complexity of the termite colony was described by Eugene Marais in his work The soul of the white ant (1973) in which he describes a termitary as having the characteristics of a body whilst being ruled by an exterior intelligence. The individual termite possesses no free will or power of choice, but the 'group soul' is controlled from without.

A joint German-Chinese study using behavioural mathematics (reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) found that the group has an ability to process information 'far more efficiently than Google'. According to study co-author Jurgen Kurths, single ants may appear random, but the group quickly becomes an ordered line in their search for food. A team from the Georgia Institute of Technology revealed that ants' skills at building stable tunnels in loose sand could aid in the design of a new generation of search-and-rescue robots.


Termite patterns on a tree trunk reveal order and intricacy, despite the destruction wreaked upon the host structure. A new system takes over the old one - evocative of human civilisations/ societies which are continually built up or broken down. Remnants of the old remain but things can never be the same.

A study of termite patterns combined with grids and text as a metaphor for Intelligent Design led to the works Termitary  and newsociety in 2009. I continue to collect reference material, and hope to continue the exploration of this fascinating subject.

newsociety (2009)

Termitary (2009)

How the text works started

At one of my  2nd year BVA crit sessions in 2007 I had masses of work. My father had passed away and our family farm had been lost in a land claim. My foundations had been viciously shaken and so I was obsessively working with loss, the ghosts of the past and memories.

One of our lecturers was Frikkie Eksteen , an artist whom I find tremendously inspiring. The one thing he found most interesting about my entire presentation was a tiny (accidental) stain on one of the photographs in my workbook! After my initial shock I decided to look for ways to explore this stain - possibly as a 'ghost' in other works. The result was Kraakbeeld (2007).

Kraakbeeld (2007).

I had no use for this image other than as an addition to other digital work, but the image did have a strange beauty which continued to intrigue me. I had previously used text in my art, and decided to interpret the image in text as an experiment. This resulted in Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight (2008). 

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditaion of my heart, be acceptable in Thy sight (2008)

The work received the 'Art on Paper Merit Award' at the Thami Mnyele Fine Arts Awards 2009, and was selected by Ms Elfriede Dreyer for the Me3 exhibition at Fried Contemporary in 2012. It was also included in the Me. Ek exhibition she curated for the 2013 KKNK. 

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditaion of my heart, be acceptable in Thy sight (2008). Detail.

The physical typing of each word is extremely time-consuming, and the digital files are enormous. Yet this allows me to explore minute detail in a variety of scales impossible to achieve by hand, and I am constantly challenged to find out how far I can push this - I am truly hooked.

Detail from Fig Leaf (2014)

2015 is already one month old. I continue to be fascinated by the intricacies of nature, and the incredible design behind everything. I simply do not have enough hours in every day to explore all the ways of giving visual expression to my sense of wonder!

The size of my digital fig leaf image is 1500mm x 1000mm. It originally contained the Book of Psalms which hadn't filled all the cells. I then added the Book of Proverbs, the Book of Ecclesiastes and finally the Song of Solomon and I now feel it is complete. The layered image provides a host of options for printing. I am thinking of printing each book on a separate layer of perspex and then combining all 4 layers into one work.

Fig Leaf (2013) - Book of Psalms

Fig Leaf (2015) - Book of Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon