Greg Streak is the first South African artist to win a place in one of the world’s great sculpture schools, reports SUZY BELL
AT LAST, a white male South African who doesn’t spend his days whingeing about feeling dislocated, alienated and oh so lonesome in the new South Africa.
Instead, Durban artist Greg Streak (25) whacks all those emotions into a unique style of pop comic sculpture that is gratefully void of sentimental semantics. Very possibly, this is the reason he’s been selected above 678 other applicants from New York to Hong Kong to study at the prestigious Rijksakademie van Beelende Kunsten in Amsterdam next year.
His work is big, bold and beautiful. It deals with his loss of faith in contemporary value systems, his sense of global dislocation and an overwhelming desire to toss even Mother Mary onto the cross. Well why not? In one sculpture, Compromise and Prejudice, Streak deals with the notion of male sacrifice using the crucifix as a methaphor. It’s not a naturalistic figure but a massive human cut-out of a bald, white male wearing silver lead gloves for protection, yet equally, and ambiguously, denying a sense of touch. Like the goggles that protect his eyes but don’t allow him to see.
Currently completing his Masters Degree in Fine Art on bursary at Technikon Natal, and having worked as an assistant to that mighty talented South African sculptor, Andries Botha, Streak was born in what he still calls “Rhodesia”, and unabashedly admits he doesn’t know what it’s like to be South African.
“I have a Eurocentric upbringing and education and this perpetual onslaught of America blasting at me … and in South Africa we have this incredible social transformation happening right now. So yes, I’m searching for a sense of stability and belonging through my art”. He believes in the poetry of the visual language instead of the sledgehammer approach. He also believes strongly in the traditional hands- on approach where the artist is physically involved in the craftsmanship, which is why he’s quite content spending three months on a sculpture, working with fibreglass, resin, wax, found objects and various mixed-media.
Greg Streak’s sculptures are on group exhibit at Durban’s NSA Gallery until October 3