drain (2002)

drain 2002
drain 2002
drain 2002
drain 2002

drain (2002)

Project : Violence / Silence
Curator : Greg Streak / PULSE
Place : Nieu-Bethesda, South Africa (2002)
Work : drain

Entitled simply Drain, the piece is minimal. Streak sunk a drainpipe with steel collar into the middle of the cement floor of an old abandoned reservoir. With the aid of some coal dust the interior of the pipe becomes fathomless, plunging into a deep blackness of unknown depth.

The empty reservoir reads as drained of its life-giving contents. It is both a salute to the harsh environment and the farmers, who battle the elements, as well as a powerful metaphor for psychological space. Whilst to drain is to make dry, discharge and carry waste, it is also to deplete and exhaust. Here, the drain can exist in the very centre of one’s being. Streak notes that it is “a chamber - a cavity in the body of an organism” and hence, it reads as an image of a great emptying.

The disturbing power of Streak’s piece lies in its deadly quietness that succinctly combines the unsettling dialogue of the exhibition theme of Violence/Silence. - Virginia Mackenny

Streak’s Drain (2002) is an arresting and poetic response to the psychological trauma of nothingness. An emblem of emptying, removal, even purging, Streak likens its industrial, impersonal form to “a chamber in the body of an organism”, an orifice in a void whose quiet presence seems rather deadly. - Kathryn Smith