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We are not separate from the world around us. The environment is part of what determines our identities and our cultures. Imagine, for example, the life of someone born into a desert environment, where there is little water. In order to survive, one would need knowledge of desert plants and animal habits, and children’s games would be played in hot sand. Compare this life to that of a child born into a concrete city – into an area like Hillbrow in Johannesburg, for example, filled with skyscrapers, but no trees; or to a person growing up in a landscape of green hills and grazing cows.

So when we think about what “culture” is, we need to consider our physical context, our environment.

And as much as our environments affect us, we affect our environments. Environments, both urban and rural, are changing in all sorts of ways – through processes that we humans have set in motion. We alter the environment to fulfill our need for food, for shelter, in order to improve our surroundings aesthetically, to develop new and better technology, to pursue progress, and in seeking ever more wealth.

We change our environments through conflicts and power struggles. Whatever we do impacts on our environment in dozens of ways.

Rooms with a view (point!)

  • Springboards: Rooms
  • Activities: A room you know well
  • Springboards: Painted rooms and yellow chair

Landscape and the sense of space

  • Springboards: Drawing with charcoal
  • Springboards: Aerial perspective
  • Springboards: Drawing landscapes from observation

Bringing the world into view

  • Springboards: Colour
  • Activities: Finding colours
  • Springboards: Composition
  • Activities: Composition
  • Activities: Painting the landscape

Landscapes in colour

  • Springboards: Landscapes in colour
  • Springboards: The Wounded Earth
  • Artists: Alan Crump
  • Artists: Clive van den Berg
  • Artists: Landscapes of the imagination – Walter Battiss
  • Activities: An imaginary place of your own creation
  • Springboards: Different notions of the land

The land tells stories: signs and meanings

  • Springboards: Landscape and ideas about the land
  • Artists: J.H. Pierneef
  • Artists: Wayne Barker and Brett Murray
  • Artists: Christine Dixie

Another kind of viewpoint: seeing in perspective

  • Springboards: Perspective: The illusion of space
  • Artists: Siyabonga Sikosana
  • Springboards: Can linear perspective also express feelings?
  • Artists: Karel Nel

Over and through the land: maps and bird’s eye views

  • Springboards: Maps and bird’s eye views
  • Artists: John Phalane
  • Artists: Titus Matiyane
  • Activities: Mapping your world
  • Springboards: Landscape: Moving through space

Land Art: Changing our environment, changing ourselves

  • Springboards: Land Art
  • Artists: Gaba Vuyisile Funda
  • Artists: Strijdom van der Merwe
  • Artists: Nukain Mabuza
  • Springboards: People’s Parks
  • Activities: An outdoor site-specific artwork
  • Activities: Speaking Out
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