17 Apr

GEOMATICS: LAND | LAW | ORE

Jeannette Unite

Front Gallery: 24.04.25 - 05.06.25

GEOMATICS is a field of science that generates images, maps and data sourced from a variety of surveillance techniques. It is a way of looking at our planet that, along with laws that regulate land use, has inspired my reflections and the title of this exhibition.

The background to these artworks is an unplanned forensic foray into land archives following my purchase of a vacant plot an hour's drive from Cape Town in 2004. I was hoping to build a studio there, but because a river traverses the plot all my attempts at getting planning permission were refused. Instead of a building, I entered a Kafkaesque "Castle"; a debacle of brutal bungling bureaucrats with municipal lawyers contradicting themselves and the municipality’s own environmental and hydrological consultants.

To resolve the PLOT issues, I delved into various state archives, the deeds office, the survey general's office and provincial property archives to source documents and historical town planning diagrams and maps to help me understand the municipal town planning mess I found myself in. Eventually, I purchased a plot off the original mother deed for R10 (€ 50c) to correct the mess, infuriating the Municipality.

Despite trials and tribulations following my purchase, I found myself receiving an Archival Advocacy Award for the forensic archival research and registering for a PhD in Earth Stewardship Sciences. I also contributed lectures in spatial design at a private architecture university and at UCT’s Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, where the Geomatics division is based.

But of course, the maps and aerial photographs and archives are visually inspiring. Using this material, transforming it into artworks, has shifted my focus from mining into the larger questions about our planet. I hope to reflect on and interrogate the system whereby all wealth is created from subterranean mineral deposits or by dividing the surface into real estate.

The current installation includes a multiple of vertical artworks, the height of a tall human, that are displayed as a barcode. I reflect on the fact that all we consume is made from mineral ingredients and cashed up at a till. These are the Earth Seams, the GEO-SEAMs. They echo the grids of longitude and latitude and question humanity’s role in constructing modernity where we can divide and distribute, own and exploit, in this age of acceleration, this techno-spasm of capitalism and inequality. My lens is on humanity’s irrational love of inanimate things that we fill our lives with: at work, in our homes and on our bodies. We are all walking talking minerals.

GEOMATICS: LAND|LAW|ORE is a chapter of an international traveling exhibition project titled PLOT, which is also a book in progress.

Ruby Wilson