At the time of the creation of this work, my mind was occupied with notions of citizenship, belonging and what it meant to feel truly part of the land that one was born into. These ideas had been magnified following an extremely violent assault on my family and I some months earlier, which had had a severely unsettling effect. In a broader framework, I had been concerned with the ideas that have preoccupied me now for decades, the concept of ‘land’ as a geographical arena of existence with vivd aesthetics and social attributes, but also as ‘place’ defined as nation-state, marked into territories, carved up, politicised and commodified.

The soil, literal parts of land, has also now been a part of my work for decades. Within Frontier, it is spread through the entire work from foreground to background, if one is to read the work in such a way. It is part of the land and part of the sky; the soil becomes part of the entire pictorial arena, the pictorial arena becomes the land. In one reading, the soil which infuses the sky may be seen as a barrier. In another, what may be perceived as a fence or barrier in front of a blood red horizon, may also be seen as a bridge across a river. 

As I began to consider this exhibition months ago, my attention fell on this work which has been in my private collection, and my home, since it was first exhibited in 2013. I re-read it within the framework of border theory, and in particular remembering Johan Schimanski’s first border crossing “process”: When we cross a border it is split, and reveals itself as a passage and its status as a barrier is compromised. I decided I had to include this work within Grey-Zones. One of the greatest attributes of painting, is that it can embody ideas that are not necessarily formulated in a linguistic manner. Reading Schimanski, this work seemed to really explore those ideas defined so clearly by him, almost a decade prior to me reading his work.