Mary Stainbank and popular culture : images of the "i[n]digene"

Abstract

In her experimental carvings, Mary Agnes Stainbank (1899 - 1996) depicted the South African indigene as subject matter. She continued its use in the popular cultural artefacts intended for mass production, which she made through the Ceramic Studio at Olifantsfontein. While these artefacts are primarily decorative and ornamental, Stainbank nevertheless executed them according to the same aesthetic idioms, which she employed in her large-scale carvings. Considerations of "self" and "other", as generated by her sculptures on the whole, apply, as Stainbank focused on those characteristics of her subjects, which identify them as 'different'.