Musings on some artwork on the walls at Liz at Lancaster
A recent guest was looking closely at some of the art on the walls at Liz at Lancaster and came across Hannelie Coetzee’s image from her African Locust Series. She asked me to explain a bit more about the work. What is this imprint in paint of a locust, doing on the wall of the guesthouse? Back when I bought Hannelie’s work, I had written a blog post which spoke about the research for the project that gave rise to this image. But in the upgrade of my new website a couple of years back, this post somehow fell between the cracks. So here is the post reconstituted!!
African Migratory Locust Series #4 2017
The science of controlled burning
It all began when artist Hannelie Coetzee teamed up with savanna ecologist Prof Sally Archibald Associate Professor in the School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences (APES) at Wits. Savanna or grass-dominated environments comprise 40% of earth’s land area and are critical for the livelihoods of much of the developing world. The role of fire is crucial in protecting these delicate grassland ecosystems. Each grass species has a different way of tolerating drought and these differences affect the flammability of different savanna types. Controlled fire burns help scientists to manage natural grasslands by picking appropriate species to develop as rainfall patterns change. After various controlled burns in areas around Johannesburg particularly in the Cradle of Humankind, Wits MsC student Felix Skhosana monitored the antelope grazing after the various burns. As is widely known the animals prefer the areas which have been burnt. But he also found that small repeated fires created different landscape habitats which, although they looked degraded, contained productive and palatable grasses. This has been important research for the management of savanna grassland areas.
2015 #Firegrazer Project Eland and Benko
Hannelie as a landscape performance artist conceived of a project which would link scientific controlled-burn research with a public art project. This is how she came to pair the #firegrazer performance burn as an artwork alongside the work of Wits savanna ecologist Sally Archibald who studied the post-burn sites. Archibald was looking particularly at the effect of new grazing for antelopes, hence the Eland in Eland and Benko (the name of a child) in Coetzee’s performance art work.
#FireGrazer 2017 Locust and Grasshopper
A further burn took place in 2017. Wits entomologist James Harrison joined the team with the focus shifting from antelope grazing to the activity of particular grasshopper species which are adapted to and prefer the short-grazed patches that burns create. This 2017 burn was superimposed on the 2015 burn to reimprint the memory of the previous burn on the landscape (part of Archibald’s research).
Day of the burn
So it came about that on a warm winter’s day some 8 years ago, a couple of friends and I headed out to the Nirox Sculpture park in the Cradle for a 6km hike to watch a prescribed performative savanna burn of images of a grasshopper and a locust seared into the landscape at sunset. The hike started a little late as permission had still not been granted for the burn to go ahead. With a slight breeze it was declared a Red day until the very last minute – in fact many of us were already on our way to the site when the news finally came through that the restrictions had been lifted and the Fire Chief had granted the permit.
Back to the artwork at Liz at Lancaster
In the work at Liz at Lancaster, Coetzee has taken a dead locust and imprinted its remains in paint between a folded piece of paper. Delicate and beautiful, the trace of this dessicated body is a poignant reminder of the ephemerality of the life of a locust, while also acting as a metonym for the broader fragility of the balance between eco-systems and the danger the world faces as time runs out for humankind to bring control over causes of climate change.