Local Art • 1975 • IV
After slashing up an entire exhibition of his own paintings with a razor blade (prompted by an unfavourable review of the exhibition and seeing a film on the other artist known as Christo), Coetzee repairs the works with string, thread and buckled leather strips, adding text elements that include references to Dada, Italian Futurism, Art Informel and the Gutai. When these 'restored'/remade works are exhibited in 1975–1976, he presents lectures on intuition, physicality, and process in art practice, referencing Art Informel (Tapié), Action Painting (Harold Rosenberg) and Body Art (Marcel Duchamp and Piero Manzoni).
An entry from the timeline included in the exhibition Dada South? Experimentation, Radicalism and Resistance (2009–2010) at the Iziko National Gallery, which proposed connections between art production in South Africa and abroad against the social and political contexts that framed them. A revised version of this timeline was later featured in the retroactive Flight Paths (2011) exhibition guide commissioned by Clare Butcher.