Strike

Made from 121 pencil stubs (wood and graphite) confiscated as well as contributed over two years by the Grade 3 learners at Goodwood Park Primary, and nylon coated wire. The work highlights the inner desire to complete a task, to gain satisfaction, to achieve, no matter how small the achievement. However in this case this achievement is sharply contrasted to the simultaneous
disappearance of the object of the task. This is both satisfying as well as defeatist. The term strike can similarly be applied when one succeeds as well as when something is struck from a list. To strike is associated with both possibility as well as consequence. These pencils stand like soldiers, a potentially anonymous group, but each bares the unique traces of its user, teeth marks, grubby fingers and almost obliterated names of those who used their pencil until it almost disappeared, until their pencils were hardly pencils anymore.