R50,000 - R80,000
Wilma Cruise (South African 1945 - ) RATS
signed and dated 2016
oil on canvas
200 by 200cm
PROVENANCE
Acquired directly from the artist
Cruise is primarily a sculptor, working with fired clay, out of which she produces life sized humans and animals. She is perhaps best known for her rendering of creatures who are an amalgamation of humans with rabbits. These bipedal rabbits stand as tall as an average person and are often cast in bronze. The merging of animals and humans represents internal struggles that are encountered in an ongoing quest for meaning.
The 8th Square at Cavalli Gallery, Cavalli Wine Estate and Six Inpossible Things Before Breakfast at the Gallery University of Stellenbosch (GUS), were the two final exhibitions in a series of seven of Wilma Cruise’ exhibtions The Alice Sequence, held over a period of six years.
The sequence was inspired by Lewis Carroll’s children’s stories Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871).
In 2016 Wilma Cruise completed her Doctoral studies at the University of Stellenbosch. The title of her thesis was: Thinking with Animals: An exploration of the animal turn through art making and metaphor. Cruise specifically asks questions around the communicative space between humans and animals.
Cruise’ sculptural installations are often accompanied by large format drawings. The two works that we have on offer on our June Auction are a departure from the artist’s usual production. They are both large scale paintings, with dark backgrounds, each contain the same two subjects, a cat and a mouse. Cruise based the two paintings on Alice’s encounter with the mouse in the pool of tears. As she swims around with the creature she finds herself confused as to how to address it.
In Would You Like Cats if You Were Me? the cat that sits slumped in the foreground, it is the other figure that hovers in the dark landscape, the mouse, that asks the titular question that is scrawled across the canvas in red: “Would you like cats if you were me? replied the mouse.” Here Cruise has posited a reality where animals can speak, and therefore a number of things are possible.
In the second painting of the same size the cat sits in the same slumped manner, this time on a tall stool, there is an outline of a landscape far in the distance and a mouse is floating on a rectangular bar. The title, inscribed in the painting Rats, which possibly states that the mouse may be a rat, while the word also acts as an exclamation of irritation.
S.D
Cruise, W. “Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast” Accessed 11 May, 2021. http://wilmacruise.com/exhibitions/six-impossible-things-before-breakfast/
Everard Read Gallery. “Wilma Cruise: Biography” Accessed 11 May, 2021. WILMA CRUISE | Biography | Everard Read Gallery Johannesburg (everard-read.co.za)
Based on communication with Wilma Cruise, 14 May, 2021.
Fees apply to the hammer price:
Free Registration
| 1 to 10000: | 23% inc VAT* |
| 10001+: | 19.55% inc VAT* |
