Collection: Roelof Louw

Roelof Louw (born 1936) is a South African-born British artist whose work from the late 1960s onwards engaged with participation, process and the social conditions of the artwork. His best-known piece, Soul City (Pyramid of Oranges) (1967), consisted of 5,800 oranges stacked in a pyramid in a gallery, with visitors invited to take one each time they entered. As the oranges were removed the pyramid collapsed, the work consumed by the participation it invited. The piece is among the earliest and most elegant propositions in British art about the relationship between the artwork, its audience and its own disappearance. Louw’s subsequent practice continued to explore systems, materials and the conditions under which objects and actions acquire meaning.