10 Daks Fook Island Banknote, signed by Walter Battiss

A Fook Island Banknote, specifically the "10 Daks" Banknote, created as part of the Fook Island conceptual art project, the brainchild of the legendary South African artist Walter Battiss (known as King Ferd III of Fook Island) and his close collaborator, Norman Catherine (known as the Norman King).

This is a signed Battiss and features the "Governor’s Fingerprint,". As Battiss was the King of Fook Island, it is his original fingerprint, bottom right. In Battiss’s hand, the specific numbering "XA 183".

Original Fook Island banknotes are highly sought after by collectors of South African conceptual art.

Fook Island, founded in the early 1970s, was a "utopian, imaginary island" created as a playful but pointed rebuke to the rigid censorship and social restrictions of apartheid-era South Africa. It wasn't just a series of paintings; it was a fully realized "state of mind" with its own:

• Alphabet and Language: (visible in the "Fook script" scattered throughout this note).

• Stamps and Currency: Like the banknote.

• Passports: Battiss famously traveled the world using his Fookian passport, which was actually stamped by customs officials in the UK, US, and Germany.

140mm x 100mm

R3,000