Jacques van der Merwe
Vestige
Jacques van der Merwe explores the relationship between the fragile nature of the body and the fading of memory. A connection is formed between the figure and the trace through the duration of time. Vestige requests viewers to consider the significance of forgetting and being in the now.
Some of these works draw from Marc Augé’s, the three forms of forgetting: Return, Suspense and Re-beginning. Requesting the audience to revisit the work to experience the slow deterioration of the human form as the oscillating water in the glass containers have impact on the plaster of Paris, cotton wool, beeswax, water and bandages as medium. In turn, we become conscious of our transitory nature as humans and the value of forgetting.
Jacques van der Merwe’s art explores the human condition through various mediums including drawing, painting, video, and sculpture. Van der Merwe is interested in the fading of memories, traces, entropy, and the immigration process.
Selfportret/Self-portrait (Suspension)
Two self-portraits, one representing the past, the other the future, signify Augé’s second account of forgetting, namely suspense. This state describes a condition in which a person is momentarily isolated in the present, detached from both past and future. In this work, the viewer is drawn into such suspension through the slow transfer of water between the two vitrines, where one figure gradually fills as the other empties. This measured exchange guides attention from one cast to the other over an extended duration.
The separation of past and future in this way opens a suspended presentness, a temporary interval in which forgetting both what has been and what is to come begins to take shape. This state emerges most clearly when the viewer’s focus rests solely on the quiet rhythm of the water, anchoring them in the immediacy of the now.
For example, when an immigrant returns to their birthland and finds themselves momentarily caught between what they once were and what they have since become, we might say that they, too, are suspended in the present.Date: 2019.
Medium: Plaster, water, beeswax, cotton wool, bandages, water, ink and glass
Dimensions: (52cm x 52cm x 120cm) x 2.
Location: POP Gallery, Brisbane, Australia
Images: Steven Vawdrey and Jacques van der Merwe
Self-portrait/Self-portrait (Return)
Self-portrait/Self-portrait (Return) explores the parallel between the ephemerality of the body and the fading of memory as we move toward oblivion. Temporality, inscribed in both body and memory, drives the work to consider the value of forgetting. Its origin lies in the tradition of the death mask, once a primary means of remembering before the invention of photography. Death masks preserved likeness after death and were often used as direct models for sculptural busts, establishing a lineage between remembrance, the body, and the history of portraiture.
This work employs the concepts of index, trace, and empreinte, creating a sustained tension between past, present, and future. In the vitrine, water moves slowly up and down across the plaster portrait, its steady rhythm recalling the instability of memory itself. This cyclical motion produces a quiet unease, suggesting how recollection is fragile, shifting, and subject to erosion over time. The work draws on Marc Augé’s account of forgetting as the return: the notion that one must forget the immediate past in order to rediscover oneself in the present by re-encountering a lost past.
In this way, Self-portrait (Return) reflects my own experience of immigration from South Africa to Australia, where remembrance is fractured and re-formed. The work becomes a meditation on identity as shaped by memory, forgetting, and the residues of displacement.
Date: 2019
Medium: Plaster, cotton wool, bandages, water, acrylic, glass
Dimensions: 52cm x 52cm x 65cm
Images: Steven Vawdrey
Selfportret/Self-portrait (rebeginning)
Forgetting gives rise to beginning. A beginning can only exist without repetition; it has no return. In this act, a split opens toward the future, allowing one to step into a time that has not yet unfolded. Forgetting and the present are inseparable: we forget within the present, and in doing so the past fades while the future remains only faintly outlined. This fragile condition creates an emotional vulnerability, reminding us of the ephemeral nature of being human.
This work finds its inspiration in the liminal spaces of immigration. For the immigrant, forgetting initiates a new awareness of time: the recognition of being both the old self and the new self, one contained within the other simultaneously. Departing from one’s motherland marks such a beginning. Any chosen path becomes a step away from return, taken in the hope of encountering a future that is still without form and lies beyond the horizon.
Date: 2019
Medium: Plaster, cotton wool, bandages, water, beeswax, acrylic, string
Dimensions : 52cm x 52cm x 100cm
Images: Steven Vawdrey
TINY EXPLOTION
An explosion unfolds in a dream-like landscape, or perhaps in a galactic void, repeating itself as a kind of catabolic effect suspended between consciousness and unconsciousness. It acts as a psychogeographical landscape, where memory, perception, and imagination overlap.
This work engages with Georges Didi-Huberman’s idea of the empreinte — the “flash” or “constellation” that emerges when past practices collide with contemporary methods. Through this collision, images are reworked, their meanings shifting from the past into something transformed in the present. The work mirrors this notion of the empreinte, but condensed into the temporal immediacy of viewing. Each repetition of the image allows it to be experienced slightly differently, shaped by the viewer’s capacity to forget — a process “related to contact with loss” and “loss of contact.” As Deleuze reminds us in Difference and Repetition, no recurrence is ever identical; each iteration carries its own difference, creating subtle variations that alter meaning.
The effect is comparable to the music accompanying this work in the video. At first hearing, it appears to repeat itself, but on closer listening, it never truly does. Each return shifts minutely in tone, texture, or rhythm, producing a new experience each time. In this way, the music itself embodies Deleuze’s principle of repetition-with-difference. Similarly, every encounter with the repeated image generates a unique narrative, subtly transforming its meaning. The repeated image thus mimics the empreinte, creating a ghostly temporality in which understanding is never fixed but continuously shifts between what has been and the present.
2020
Canon 5dmkII, 100mm fixed focal micro lens, 120 FPS
35:37minutes.
Music: composed by Nico van der Merwe
