It’s fun to compare your spontaneous impressions of an artwork with what you find out after you’ve Googled it. Like this (for Norman Catherine’s Endangered Species, 2001. Oil on Wood, 180 X 124 x 8cm)

Reminiscent of wooden printer’s trays. Incongruous because the figures aren’t pretty teapots etc. yet by displaying them this way it somehow makes them smack of self- importance. Why are the disturbing, disproportionate figures, garish-to-the-max, with grimacing mouths full of teeth and long tube arms? Some have flames on their heads (self combusting devils) or are half-man, half-croc. Is this hell? Why the gaudy, smart suits... and the bottles and spray cans? Like (yet unlike) items lined up in your bathroom cupboard – poison, antidotes... how menacing, funny, odd... Those self-important looking plaques? With crazy statements...UNITY IS STRENGTH – no mistaking that reference to Apartheid SA... Oh, so if these bogey men are an endangered, dying species, perhaps it’s good to lock them away somewhere they can’t spread their hectic, out-of-whack energy. Like it. – A cheeky, brilliant way to poke fun at a vile story.

After visiting www.normancatherine.co.za; www.artfact.com; www.sahistory.org and www.answers.com: Catherine was linked to the legendary Walter Battiss. Worked with him to develop Fook Island “one of SA’s most fruitful creative collaborations of the early 70s and 80’s”. He was “provocative” and “exuberantly rebellious” in the face of the corruption in SA under Apartheid. Catherine is “seminal” to SA Art and fascinating – get Googling my friend there’s lots more and it’s fascinating...