These little pigs went to the market

The exact origin of this old stock market saying is lost.  However, what is crystal clear is its meaning. Bulls, when attacking, thrust their horns upward whilst bears, using their paws, swipe downward, suggesting that upward and downward movements in markets can be capitalised upon. Pigs, through their greed, just get slaughtered.  

The genesis of the work “These Little Piggies Went to Market” lies in my production in March 2017 of an image of a clenched fist with an extended middle finger on the intra-day stock chart of Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) listed Oakbay Resources, the Gupta family’s financial vehicle.

I decided to portray the current South African financial world by means of a tableau consisting of a pigsty containing several “hybrid” pigs that idiomatically portray a diverse set of companies or entities that I believe have contributed significantly to the current state of malaise in our country.

The form of the artwork is didactically based and contemporary in nature. It attempts to inform the viewer in a manner that initially engages through a tableau of well recognised forms, in particular, the much maligned pig.

The pig has been used endlessly by humanity as an anthropomorphic foil to their faults and foibles. They are a well suited vehicle for the expression of these ideas.

The description of the objects within the tableau are presented in the accompanying catalogue, and offer two competing narratives. The first presents the version that the company or entity wishes the world to see, and the second presents an alternative version that they would prefer the world not to see. The narratives are ostensibly based on facts, and drawn from publicly available documents and articles.

The use of a tableau in which each morphed pig represents a mini corruption story might be considered a sufficiently complex artistic endeavour by itself. But this would miss out on the opportunity to investigate the relationship between messaging in contemporary society and how it can be manipulated to support nefarious ends, and the embodiment of those corrupt activities in the form of pigs.