Lot 197: Lizza Littlewort; South African 1963-; Rikishi

Lizza Littlewort
South African 1963-
Rikishi
inscribed with the title on the stretcher
oil on canvas
120 by 100cm, unframed

Starting Bid: ZAR 18000

Minor abrasions along edges and surface dirt.

Gerard Sekoto Gallery, Alliance Française, Johannesburg, Raw Over-Cooked, 27 May to 15 June 2005.

This work, titled Rikishi formed part of the artist's solo show, Raw Overcooked , exhibited at the at the Gerard Sekoto Gallery at the Alliance Française in 2005. Solofa Fatu Jr., a Samoan wrestler, more famously known as Rikishi, drew fame by performing alongside Kane, Brock Lesnar, King Kong Bundy and John Cena under the 'RAW' franchised brand. Taking her departure from the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss who used the phrase to contrast nature with culture in his book The Raw and the Cooked, Littlewort appropriates the methodology of his title by using 'overcooked' to describe the hyper masculine charade of entertainment wrestling where the stage-managed events of the game are far from natural and the game presents itself as a spectacle of manufactured obviousness.