The figures are made from dead wood taken from the shore of the lake on Boundary Lane in Gqeberha. They are made as representations of wights of the lake – which itself is an example of a green third space that is used by community members of all ages and tended to by residents who live in the area. Yet while some visitors to the site act as stewards – taking responsibility for the refuse bins, tending the gardens, and maintaining the parking area to keep the site accessible – others, likely out of ignorance rather than malice, leave fishing hooks on the lakeside to rust, and discard cigarette ends and fishing line on the shore where it poses an entangling threat to local bird life. If a place becomes sacred through the attention and repeated actions of those who return to it, then both the gardeners and the fishermen participate in the sacralisation of the lake. The difference lies not in the act of using the space, but in the consciousness with which it is used – in the awareness of how one’s actions affect the land, its other inhabitants, and those who will come after. 

The Boundary Boys reference the unsettling body language of Jane Alexander’s Butcher Boys and the idea of dehumanisation of the human other to suggest a rift between human and the natural ‘other’. Drawing on the underlying violence and victim-perpetrator dichotomy implicit in Alexander’s work, Boundary Boys comments on the violence that comes with conceptualising humans as existing outside of, or in opposition to wider nature. When we conceive of ourselves as such, we fail to recognise our place in the intricate, interconnected web of ecosystems that is the natural world – and we fail to take responsibility for the impact we have on Earth and her other inhabitants.