In the moat of the Cape Town Castle, built by the Dutch East India Company between 1666 and 1679 to defend itsrevictualling station for east-bound ships, Kevin Brand installed a gigantic jug made of welded mild steel and old woven plastic bags stitched together and painted in a blue and white Delft pattern with banner paint. The sculpture, which simultaneously seemed to float and sink, was designed to last for three weeks and serve as a public introduction to the first important group art exhibition to be mounted in the labyrinthine interior of the Castle. The exhibition, held in June 1995, was entitled 'Scurvy', and marked the reclamation for public culture of a previously tainted site - the Castle was the local headquarters of the South African Defence Force. Brand's sculpture was a charged synthesis of the themes of the 'Scurvy' exhibition - a colonial occupation, now broken.		As a form of protest, Company servants would toss their masters'prize possessions into the moat, saysBrand. The jug spoke of shattered privilege, of privation, the absence of water and hence of sustenance. With its parched neck unfurled like a gramophone, overlooking the Parade, one of Cape Town' oldest public squares, Brand's sculpture enacted a plea for communication, encouraging passersby who had previously shunned the Castle, to enter. The jug was a broken reservoir of hope - risen from the muddy depths of the moat, broken, yet still drifting, its original function destroyed and a new purpose gaining ascendance.Public sculpture is Brand's great passion. We must 'open up our landscape, our walkways, jetties, rockfaces,' says Brand. Scale and the adaptation of 'humble material are Brand's method of alchemy. 'I like using materials that don't cost money and turning them into something precious. More..
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