The Mourner distils the quiet dignity that characterises Clarke’s portrayals of working-class and marginalised people in Simon’s Town and later Ocean View. A single figure, crisply dressed and holding a bright bouquet of red roses, stands against a stark backdrop – an emblem of lost love, grief, and perseverance. The vertical format and frontal pose echo devotional imagery and religious icons, suggesting that mourning itself can be a form of faith and contemplation.

Within Clarke’s broader oeuvre, The Mourner aligns with his socially engaged works of the 1950s and 1960s that documented forced removals, funerals, and everyday acts of solidarity within his marginalised community. This work anchors the exhibition’s concern with the emotional and spiritual aftermath of political violence. The painting seems to anticipate the collective mourning that would follow the killings of 1976 and the Soweto Uprising, and becomes an icon of the many losses that marked the struggle years. Clarke’s restrained modernist language of flattened planes, simplified forms, and luminous colour, allows the figure to hover between portrait and icon, individual and archetype. Through a contemporary lens, The Mourner resonates with ongoing rituals of remembrance, from hashtag memorials to public vigils, and reminds us of Clarke’s pivotal role as the poet of everyday resilience.