In 1981 I made an artwork entitled VROETELMAT. The work looks similar to the work BLIND DOTS but it has only 24 brushes and the centres of each brush are not dotted with white dots. I showed VROETELMAT at my Johannesburg Art Gallery exhibition that same year. After the exhibition I gave VROETELMAT and another work called CHAOS to Markus de Jong to say thank you to him for publishing my anthology of visual poetry called KYKAFRIKAANS. A few years later Markus moved to the Netherlands and took the works with him. I haven't seen these two works for more than twenty-seven years and I therefore decided to revive VROETELMAT as a new, different work.

 

BLIND DOTS is so titled because the tactile brushes appear to invite light stroking with the hand, almost as if the visitor is blind. The dots were formed when the handle at the centre of each brush left a small round gap when it was unscrewed. These gaps were filled by the same white bristle as that surrounding each brush. The dots are very slightly raised to make them noticeable to blind people.