Context (CMS Context)
The Artist's Press website offers further details on the book. 'Qauqaua is a unique book, published by The Artists' Press and The Kuru Art Project. Lying on a pan of fragmented rock, close to the Botswana border in Namibia, is a small boulder, which looks so different from the surrounding jagged landscape that it appears as if it must have somehow been placed there. The Bushmen or San living in the nearby village of D'kar talk of this rock as being the body of Qauqaua, a folk heroine.

The artists of the Kuru Art Project have grown up with the Qauqaua folktale, which has been told by parents and grandparents. With their traditional way of life changing so rapidly around them, they have decided to preserve this story in book form.

THE ARTISTS: Thamae Setshogo, Coex'ae Qgam, Qwaa Mangana, Cgose Ncoxo, Sobe Sobe, Nxabe Eland, Coex'ae Bob, Qhaeqhao Moses and Thamae Kaashe work primarily with oil on canvas but have also worked with various printing techniques. They have held many successful exhibitions around the world and their work can be found in numerous private and public collections. Each originalprint in the book is signed by the artist.

LANGUAGES: The book is printed in English and in Naro, the predominant San language of the Ghanzi district. Until recently Naro was a spoken language only. Linguist's Cobi and Hessel Visser from the Netherlands have been transcribing the language. They have published an English/Naro dictionary and are running literacy classes in the village. The orthography that they have developed is understood by the San in D'kar, as well as by Setswana speaking people in Botswana. The folktale was written down in Naro by Hessel and Cobi and translated in English by the staff of the Kuru Cultural Centre.

PRINTING: The images were drawn directly onto the lithographic printing plates by the artists during a collaborative workshop in 1994. Mark Attwood worked with the artists at their studio in D'Kar, proofing the litho plates on an etching press. The drawn plates were taken to Johannesburg where the edition was printed. Each impression was hand inked and printed on a hand-crank litho press. A total of 61 plates were used to complete 11 prints. The text for the book was set in Palatino Roman at The Artists' Press. The linocuts were scanned and combined with the text before being printed on a Vandercook letterpress proof press, to achieve the slightly embossed, tactile quality that distinguishes letterpress printing. One page has been blind embossed.

BINDING: The books have been bound in full leather, using goatskins from the Kalahari. These skins have been vegetable tanned in D'Kar, using the Elandsboontjie root. Peter Carstens in Johannesburg has done the binding.

PAPER: Printed on 250 gsm Velin Arches white made by the Arjomari mill in France. It is 100% cotton and alkaline buffered to be archival. The natural deckle on the edge of the paper has been kept, with the other two edges being torn, not cut. The paper is watermarked and has a slightly rough texture.

INTEGRITY: The best possible materials have been used at every stage of production. The paper is acid free and the inks lightfast. The edition is limited to 100 books plus 20 Artists Proofs. On completion of the edition, the plates were destroyed and no further prints will be made. The lithographs are signed by the artists. ' Details taken from http://www.artprintsa.com/qauqaua.html
Event Date 7/3/2014
Author: Rachel Hand

Context (CMS Context)
Presented by The Art Fund and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. An acquisition project to build a collection of modern and contemporary work on paper from Australia, Canada and South Africa was undertaken over 2011-13 with the support of a grant under The Art Fund's RENEW programme. The collection was developed with the expert advice and generous assistance of Annie Coombes and Norman Vorano in relation to South African and Inuit artists respectively. Khadija Carroll, Anita Herle and Diana Wood Conroy also contributed to the selection process. Obtained as part of a larger group of prints (2013.266- 283) from The Artists' Press (The Artists' Press, Waterboard Farm, White River, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa).

The Kuru art project was established in 1990; it aimed to empower a community of San - former hunter-gatherers, also known as Bushmen, the indigenous people of the Kalahari desert - resident in western Botswana by offering new means to represent and sustain their customary culture, and generate income through the production and sale of art.

The group - of up to 20 male and female painters - have gained international recognition and been widely exhibited. Though best known for their paintings, they were trained in printmaking at an early stage by Tamar Mason of the Artists Press, who took image of Inuit work from Canada to provide an inspiration.
Artists Press went on to work with the Kuru project on several occasions, producing powerful prints; those by male artists feature animals while the women depict plant life.

The artists' book exemplifies the project; it uses prints by all the major artists to illustrate one of the core creation stories.

Event Date 7/3/2014
Author: maa

Description (CMS Description)
Limited edition artists' book,(1994) titled Qauqaua', which references a folk heroine and a core creation story.
The book features 10 double and 4 single page colour lithographs by Thamae Setshogo, Coex'ae Qgam, Qwaa Mangana, Cgose Ncoxo, Sobe Sobe, Nxabe Eland, Coex'ae Bob, Qhaeqhao Moses and Thamae Kaashe. Signed, dated and inscribed. Edition 84/100.
Condition: Excellent.

Event Date 7/3/2014
Author: maa

Context (CMS Context)
Exhibited: The Power of Paper, Li Ka Shing Gallery, MAA, 14 February - 6 December 2015. Reproduced in the exhibition catalogue.


Event Date 20/2/2015
Author: Eleanor Wilkinson