Golden Boy from the The Colony Series Robert Hamblin
The Colony (Phase II – Occupy)
The Colony (Occupy) is the second chapter of images originating at Dalebrook ocean tidal pool close to my home in Cape Town. I started swimming there during the time The Occupy movement beset Wall Street in 2011.
I was interested in the fact that they were protesting the corruption of Capital without a campaign for an alternative economic model. During this time I started noticing how shooting against sunrise light brought about imagery that made the water look like molten gold and diamonds. I started watching the price of gold and other stocks on the world markets and became interested in how these very emotional models of human interaction pretty much determined my present and future and also how very little I understood of a force that determined the shape of my life. Looking at Capital and money also fit into my continuing interrogation of masculinity, patriarchy and how that fits my body and identity.
The installation at University of Johannesburg Gallery opening on 8 October 2014 will consist of 260 gold-in-the-water images, 260 days of gold price graphs and 365 day graph of the ocean tide. 260 is the number of working days in the Western calendar, the days on which we trade.
The Juxtaposition speaks to ideas around workdays, capital and the ordinary man’s integration of those concepts into daily life. In this case the ordinary man is an artist who looks at water and ideas of masculine constructs everyday. I say man because in the system of patriarchy a man is still expected to muster the concept of money, his humanness measured but this.
The installation includes images of suited men in the water pointing to power constructs and hierarchies inside of the boundaries people colonise and live within. The images serve as a metaphor for such colonisations.
Robert Hamblin 