Artist: Cameron Platter
Design: Ben Johnson
Text: Lucienne Bestall
Artworks © the artists
First edition of 50
Special edition of 10 with original drawings by Cameron Platter
I originally went to the ELC Art and Craft Centre [at Rorke’s Drift] in 2013 to find the linocut press that John Muafangejo had printed on. I found the press, but it was in such disrepair that it was all but unusable… On that visit, I stumbled on the weaving workshop, and the press was immediately forgotten, never to be thought of again. I wanted to collaborate with the Centre in whatever capacity – to tap into its story as a found history.
– Cameron Platter in conversation with Lucienne Bestall, July 2026
My Work Here Is Done traces both this history and Platter’s collaboration with the Rorke’s Drift weavers in a photo zine and twinned texts, accompanied by stickers and a patch excerpted from the resulting tapestries.
The zine first launches at Printed Matter’s 2026 New York Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1 on 24 September, and then at A4 Arts Foundation on 24 October on the occasion of the exhibition Interior Design, which features a presentation of Platter’s tapestries and wooden sculptures. The Cape Town launch coincides with Design Week South Africa.
Ten Special Editions each contain five original drawings by the artist.
Warp and Weft, the zine’s twinned essays, proceed from opposite covers of the same booklet, converging at its centre fold. One recalls the story of Rorke’s Drift; the other, Platter’s engagement with the ELC Art and Craft Centre. Both begin with the same opening paragraph – describing the “slowly desaturating” four-hour journey from Durban to Dundee – to arrive at different, yet interdependent, resolutions.
As to how [his] works might figure in the history of the Centre, Platter suggests that they are only “a little blip in the story – another glitch.” But fragments of them still remain in the weaving workshop, even as recently as July 2026, reference printouts and larger templates found scattered between the looms: a crocodile, colour test swatches, the phrase ‘transdimensional control’, the word ‘karma’, a set of degraded DVD cover images. Asked if he was surprised to learn that remnants from his projects can even now be found at the Centre, he replies, “there was a moment of ‘holy shit’, you know, realising these traces of mine were still there.” But then again, as he first said, it’s a strange place. All sorts of stories have come to settle at the site – competing, incongruous, continuous.
