PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF A LADY, LONDON
GEORGIE PAPAGEORGE (SOUTH AFRICAN B. 1941)
Revolutions - From Creation to Crossroads
signed Georgie Papageorge and dated 94/95 (on the reverse)
mixed media on canvas
170 x 170 cm (67 x 67 in)
painted between 1994-1995

PROVENANCE
Art First, London (purchased by the present owner in the mid-1990s)

Much of the work of Papageorge is about political and geographical rifts in Africa, as she says: I am a South African coming out of a country torn by rift, by apartheid... You can find it in the arterial lines that run through each and every one of us, the rift lines that break us apart or that create pathways in our lives.

In the present work, the artist criticises the controversial government sponsored building of buffalo fences in and around Botswana's Okavango Delta and the resultant schism between wealthy farmers and conservationists. Constructed in the 1980s and 90s to protect the country's lucrative beef export market, the fences had a hugely damaging effect on both wildlife and local communities. Showing a circle of photographs depicting nature and wildlife engulfed by a blood-red broken line. Papageorge, in the present work, suggests that Botswana is paying the very highest price for this particularly insensitive government policy.