Artist Statement:

Bruce Rimmel (Artist)

The figures are based upon rock art forms found from across southern Africa, from Drakensberg to the Kalahari, and are accompanied by increasingly complex technological forms to represent the cultural changes across history: spears and bows and arrows are replaced by farming tools and chariots before modern technologies appear at the edge of the spiral expresses this sense of origin and belonging. At the heart of the piece is the Blombos Cave Artefact, and springing forth from this are playful representations of humans of all races, and from all cultural horizons (Palaeolithic to the present day), to suggest the spread of mankind from the ancestral South Africa to the whole world.In 1991, at the cave site of Blombos in the Western Cape of South Africa, archaeologist Christopher Henshilwood found a piece of engraved red ochre dating to 80,000 years ago. This was surprising: until it was found, symbolic thinking and artistic expression were thought to have originated in Europe much later than the period of the Blombos cave habitation. More evidence has been uncovered from other sites in South Africa, as well as Botswana and Namibia, to show that symbolic and artistic expression emerged in Southern Africa in places like Blombos.Here, then, in this cave in South Africa, we find the earliest evidence of humans behaving in a familiar way: not just hunting or completing functional tasks, but thinking symbolically or abstractly and creating art forms on important objects. To my mind, this cave represents a cradle of modern humanity, in that everything we think of as homo sapiens springs from these first artefacts. If South Africa is the ultimate origin of all humanity, what place is there for racism or xenophobia in the modern country? In visiting South Africa, as a human being, I feel as if I am coming home.