From N1, 2004-2011, FRAMED

This battered and cracked basin looks to me like the complete road map of a country and therefore it encapsulates the N1 project. The basin is set in a run-down gas station at Touws River which is 182 kms from Cape Town. The dump of a town is emblematic of previously functional towns which now get overshot because cars can travel great distance on a tank.

The N1 Highway slices South Africa North by South, from the Zimbabwean border to Cape Town. Its 2100 km are historically, socially, and politically charged; however, the road proper only appears at the front and end of this photographic series. Between these brackets, the N1 is presented through oblique scenes on and around the road that give a sense of the road's taut atmosphere.

The extended captions of Sean O'Toole, a Cape Town-based journalist and writer, augment this sense.

The National Gallery of South Africa owns this work, and the N1 was exhibited at The University of the South in Tennessee, whatiftheworld in Cape Town and the Goethe Institute in Johannesburg.

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