IMPACT, a solo exhibition by Joni Brenner at Wits Origins Centre
- Wits University
The exhibition presents an in-depth artistic response to a scientific subject – the 2.8-million-year-old Taung Child skull.
The exhibition encapsulates Joni Brenner’s long-term creative engagement with the skull, broadly exploring themes of fragility and survival, destruction and creation, uncertainty, loss, pressure, chance, place and belonging.
Brenner has been drawn to this and other skulls for two decades - as an artist and also as an educator - with her pioneering art/science collaborative courses and field trips that often focused on bones and fossils.
“The thinking behind the exhibition centres on presenting what an in-depth artistic response to a scientific object might look like, that is, not a set of images of the Taung Child, but rather an exploration of the feelings provoked by the small skull, the enormous impact it had on the way we understand our human origins, the drama, chance and loss that underlies those scientific gains,” says Brenner, who is also a Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Arts and Culture Studies (IACS) in the Wits School of Arts and a Wits alumna.
Brenner’s work has drawn from the fragmentary and partial nature of archaeological evidence and strikingly combines different mediums and surfaces – from paper, canvas and stone veneer to clay, plaster of paris, bronze and film.
Professor Emeritus Isabel Hofmeyr, who delivered the opening address at the exhibition launch on 26 October, “The viewer must also engage with how these different media have been manipulated: squeezed, gripped, tossed, hurled, slammed, bronzed, cast, splashed, brushed, elbowed, puddled, dripped, impressed and impacted.
These actions recall the taphonomic processes on bone: swirling, washing, tumbling, discoloration, burning, mineralization, etc. In these pieces, we see evidence of a similar layering of process to produce a representation, but these are never fossilized, and these images resist any sense of finality.”
The exhibition also features an astonishing exact replica of the skull, which provides reference for the works on display. The replica was made by master caster Bongani Nkosi at the Wits casting lab, to the exact weight of the fossil, and it was realistically painted by Stella Olivier in breathtaking detail.
The exhibition is a form of tribute to the Taung Child and it is therefore fitting that it marks the beginning of Wits’ year-long commemoration of the discovery of the Taung Child, and the profound impact the skull has had on the understanding of our human origins.
The Taung Child has also prompted questioning and conversations around ancestry, religion, ownership, chance, and different interpretations of the past. The commemoration events and conversations aim to draw from a wide range of perspectives, voices, individuals and communities who have interacted with the skull, its place of discovery and the stories that surround it.
网易体育 the Taung Child skull
In 1924, the juvenile fossilized skull was blasted from a limestone quarry in the town of Taung in the North West province of South Africa. It was recovered from the rubble intact,
with a full set of milk teeth and a clear brain endocast.
The scientific description of the Taung fossil by Raymond Dart eventually effected a profound re-ordering of knowledge and changed the way human evolution is thought about and understood. Now accepted and celebrated as the type specimen of Australopithecus africanus, it enabled scientists to locate our human origins in Africa.
The dramatic recovery of the skull from the limestone breccia and its subsequent powerful impact on the development of evolutionary science, also represents the loss of that once living infant. In this way the Taung Child skull embodies what it means to tolerate contradictory forces of creation and destruction.
网易体育 IMPACT at Origins Centre
IMPACT was made possible by the Faculty of Science at Wits.
The exhibition runs until the end of April 2025.
There will be walkabouts and workshops with Joni Brenner throughout the exhibition period.
Keep an eye on Origins Centre’s social media or contact bookings.origins@wits.ac.za or call 011 717 4700 if you would like to arrange a special walkabout.
Tickets available on Webtickets or at the door.
Visit Origins Centre:
Hours: Monday – Friday 09h00 – 17h00; Saturday and public holidays 10h00 – 16h00
We have dedicated parking in front of our building on Wits Campus; please bring ID to get onto campus.
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Website: www.wits.ac.za/origins