Corrugated iron is the canvas. Time is the artist.

To many, rusted corrugated iron is a cast away material, an ugly reminder of global inequality. Yet this humble no nonsense and inexpensive building material, invented 190 years ago, has never been bettered; strong, long-lasting, lightweight, and re-usable; such versatility is the key to its continuing use. It was first patented in 1829 by Henry Robinson Palmer, a British architect and engineer to the London Dock Company, and has since travelled the globe.

Corrugated comes from the Latin word “Ruga” which means to wrinkle or crease. A sheet of thin iron passes through a set of rollers to create its distinctive wavey shape, which provides it its structural rigidity and strength.

To Mark Hilltout, it is all of that.  But it is also endlessly complex and gloriously random; something that time alone can create and no artist can hope to better. Bleached by the sun, flayed by wind and rain, scorched by fire and repainted by man, each sheet bears a unique history.

In the early years corrugated iron was protected from the elements by hot dipping in molten zinc, but over time, the protective zinc layer erodes. The iron underneath is exposed to the environment and it starts to rust. And so begins a random process whose outcome is impossible to predict.  Will it be soft or brittle? Warm to the eye or cold? It is the result of thousands of happy and unhappy accidents.

Mark seeks out and buys discarded sheets from Khayelitsha and neighbouring towns.  Out of 100 perhaps only 10 are suitable.

Mark says;  ‘Over the years, my senses of sight and touch have been trained. I look for interesting changes in colour, pattern, texture and grain. But it’s the patina that excites me. It is so beautiful that my sole aim is bring it to life.  The more I study corrugated iron, the more I realise that the metal itself should dictate the composition of each artwork – that the artist must not get in the way of the medium’.

If the medium is the art, what then is the role of the artist?  The big artistic leap is so simple it seems like no leap at all.

 ‘I bang it flat’ says Mark, matter-of -factly.  ‘Once you’ve taken out the corrugations it becomes manageable.  It becomes a canvas’.

Once selected, the sheets are beaten with a 3lb hammer, washed, dried and sealed. The process is always the same. The final results are always different.

At his Woodstock studio the sheets are assembled in cowshed formation and sorted by hue into a ‘library of iron’. Every sheet, no matter its age or colours, is unified by two hues. The first is the iron itself – a neutral dull-silvery grey colour that occasionally reveals itself where the layers of paint have flaked or chipped off. 

The second is gnawing rust, which comes in a wide range of browns; from warm orange to near black umber – sunset to midnight.

When two different sheets of different ages and sources are stitched together, they form a unique and exhilarating surface – a palimpsest in metal. No photograph can do justice to the nuances.   It must be viewed up close and in person.

Finally Mark says; ‘We are drawn to imperfections, to irregular shapes and patterns, if only to make sense of them.  When people look at my work, I hope they will appreciate the beauty of the material that I love’. 

Come and see for yourself at his exhibition “A CELEBRATION OF CORRUGATED IRON”. 13–16 FEB, 10am–6pm, 6 Ravenscraig Road 7925 Woodstock Cape Town.

Please email any enquiries to PR@markhilltout.com.
View our online gallery.