I don't much believe in cultural boycotts. Cutting people off from communication of culture (which must perforce speak liberty) seems very different from denying them the pleasure of sport. Invited to exhibit in South Africa in 1973 I accepted and made a preliminary visit, during which I collected postcards (mostly of people from whose skins I could paint the patchwork of A Skin Game and its variants) and other material, and came to the decision that I would only show works relating to Africa. By the time the exhibition took place in 1974 I had painted slogan pictures and studies of West African sculpture as well as a number of pictures based on postcards. From the ubiquitous and iniquitous signs of apartheid (Slegs vir blankes, slegs vir nie- blankes / reserved for whites, reserved for non-whites etc.) I devised a slogan in Afrikaans Slegs vir Almal, i.e. 'Reserved for everybody'. I had a rubberstamp made of this and overprinted all the banknotes that passed through my hands. I made a screenprint of such a tinted and overprinted Five Rand note and produced a cheap poster version. The slogan itself appeared on most of the paintings in the show.

The exhibition took place in a gallery open to all races though the only black South Africans who came were those I or my friends brought along to it. It was a puny protest and my naivety was rudely revealed when I saw with what rapidity some of the works which I had sold appeared in the London salerooms having served as a way of smuggling money into English accounts. My slogan however (and the overprinted banknotes which got me into a little trouble) did have a political afterlife. The ideas that link Skin Game to Berlin Wall were finally brought together as an emblem of schism in the Inferno. Both the institution of Apartheid and the Berlin Wall have officially disappeared by the time I write this: yet, like the mystery flower bed in 20 Sites, they have strong ghosts. Both are still part of the political fabric. 'Stone walls do not a prison make / nor iron bars a cage'.  > >

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