A material paradise: Reworking the Ghent Altarpiece in the Keiskamma Art Project's Creation Altarpiece

The Keiskamma Art Project, an embroidery project in the village of Hamburg, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, has produced a number of large-scale works in needlework which are modelled on well-known art objects from the West. These include the Creation Altarpiece, now in the collection of the Unisa Art Gallery, which refers to the Ghent Altarpiece (1432) by Jan and (possibly) Hubert van Eyck. Unveiled at the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. George in Grahamstown in 2007, the Creation Altarpiece has subsequently been exhibited in not only art galleries but also, for example, the Cathedral of St. George the Martyr in Cape Town. While the Creation Altarpiece alludes to the Ghent Altarpiece in terms of its shape and aspects of its iconographical content, these areas of similarity actually emphasise differences between the two works. Such distinctions, it is suggested, stress that the frames of reference of the makers of the Creation Altarpiece are South African rather than European. Meaning is also, however, dependent on the context in which a work is read—a point made by exploring the kinds of associations and connotations the Creation Altarpiece acquired when viewed in the context of places of worship.