“Young Haddock” (2018) – hand-pulled screen print by Conrad Botes

Conrad Botes (b. 1969) came to fame (and notoriety) as one half of the brains behind Bitterkomix – a subversive and biting satirical publication started in 1992 with fellow student Anton Kannemeyer. Targeting Afrikaner and South African culture and their sacred issues of race, politics and religion, subjects are portrayed in an irreverent and provocative comic book format. This Pop aesthetic and ideology also inform Botes’ paintings, sculptures and prints: His work is characterised by jarring, bold colour, graphic line work and popular-cultural symbols – repeated, flattened and “packaged” into a visual language that is accessible and consumable. By treating disturbing, traumatic and violent subject matter in a comic, detached manner, Botes masterfully elicits in the viewer a response of simultaneous attraction and repulsion, an experience all too familiar within present-day consumerist culture.

Botes has held solo shows in Sydney, London, New York and Bologna, and participated in numerous international group exhibitions and biennales, notably; at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2011 and in 2001 alongside artist greats Jean Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, William Kentridge, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol at the Galleria of Modern Art in Bergamo, Italy.

• Screen print on 100% archival paper (BFK Rives 250gsm)
• Paper size: 560x760mm
• Limited edition of 50
• Numbered and signed by the artist
• Hand-printed in South Africa
• Please note all prints are sold unframed