All the images from which these paintings were made are drawn from either a Department of Education manual for Physical Education instructors or else from similar sources including an anatomy book. They are all images which were made in order to illustrate a particular directive or lesson. Beyond that these images do not even have an author, the photographer’s bread and butter assignment merely a function performed for the Education Department that takes the credit for these. The manual is dated from the 1950’s, and is as outdated as the hairstyles and sportswear evident in the photographs. And yet, these images are still reproduced in the sense of elementary lessons being passed on from one generation to the next; after-images after images. What interested me was the banality of these images, and the sense perhaps, of a loss and the promise of a future which accrues to these ageing and discarded images.
The silk-screens are from photographs I took during a life drawing class in a Fine Art Department at a University similar to the one I teach in.
Mark Hipper was born in Ghana in 1960. He lives and works, as the lecturer of painting at Rhodes University, in Grahamstown. His works are part of many prestigious collections including Johannesburg Art Gallery, Mary and Leigh Block Gallery, University of Chicago, WITS University Collection, SANLAM and the Endhoven Collection.
