The Walter Battiss Archive is expansive and comprehensive. The major body of materials that make up the Archive, and which have been acquired from the Battiss Estate, is now located at the Jack Ginsberg Centre of Book Arts. It consists of numerous letters, diaries, and sketchbooks, along with diverse documents and ephemera.

The repository of the research which Battiss conducted on Southern African Rock Art, is now housed at the Origin Centre at Wits. Supplementing these two parts are the Murray Schoonraad correspondence (JGCBA), the Dacre Punt correspondence (Unisa), and the documents at the Walter Battiss Museum in Somerset East.

Many unfamiliar aspects of the creative output of Battiss are slowly emerging from this expansive Archive, including his poetry, his photography and his performance pieces. This exhibition focuses on the various forms of Mail Art in which Battiss indulged. These forms are displayed here and through his protracted, imaginary Fook island performance, ranging from cleft sticks with Fook scripted messages to aerograms dispatched from hot air balloons.

- Wilhelm van Rensburg

1. Fook Fan Mail

'Fookians' is a term Jack Ginsberg ascribes to the quirky names Walter Battiss often invented for the inhabitants of his imaginary Fook Island. The term, 'Fook Fans', however, refers to those people most receptive to Battiss's wry sense of humour. Norman Catherine could be considered his Number One fan, expanding the material culture of Fook Island considerably with his inventive Fook animals, Fook Olympic postcards, and Fook stamps. It was during Battiss's two visits to the United States in 1976 and 1979, that he cultivated a serious following, chiefly among the youth in search of an alternative lifestyle. His association with them, in Colorado and during a long trip through the Arizona Desert is captured evocatively in Fook Book II. The Walter Battiss archive contains fan letters from his acquaintances, often with interesting art works, such as those by Gerrit Hillhorst, 'Dennis' and Jenny Christie.

2. Walter Battiss and Fook Mail Art

Fook Mail Art was a natural offshoot of Walter Battiss's protracted happening and/or performance throughout the 1970s, commonly known as Fook Island. The inception of Fook Island is commonly believed to have occurred in November 1971 when the ideal of a 'fake island' purportedly came to Battiss while walking back to his hotel from yet another conceptual exhibition in London. 'Concepts. You write them down on bits of paper and pin them up. You can't see any object or anything" Battiss related to Barry Davidow in 1979. "So I decided while walking up Alymer Road that I'll make up the concept of an island. The concept will become real. It won't be just a selfish thing that an artist makes up and pins unto the wall, but something that everyone can participate in. That will make this island real, although it is a fake island. I then rushed upstairs and looked under 'F' in the London directory and found the name 'Fook'. A veritable material culture resulted, with objects abounding, alluding to many practices and rituals performed during its lifespan: Fook banners and flags and ceremonial sceptres, Fook currency with notes and coins, Fook postage stamps first day covers, postcards and even cleft sticks. Battiss arguably became the first mail artist in South Africa.

3. Walter Battiss: Cook's Bay - Moorea, Tahiti

"By the time [Walter] Battiss visited Tahiti and Moorea [between September 1978 and May 1979] they were both very much tourist destinations. He made a number of consummate watercolours of the looming pinnacle maintains and the verdant tropical vegetation of the island of Moorea, which rises vertically out of the ocean. In [this] work, entitled Cook's Bay Moorea (1978), the sea is rendered in soft blues, pinks and greens and he foregrounds a number of pleasure crafts in this dramatic and idyllic bay. This image is later used on the stamps minted for Fook Island. The 30 Zook Fook Island stamp replicates the image of Cook's Bay and creates a direct link between the islands of Moorea,

Tahiti, and his fertile imagination, which, along with his collective memory of many islands visited, gave rise to the notion of Fook."

Karel Nel (2016) "Rock Pools and islands: The Imaginative Landscape of Walter Battiss, The King of Fook" In: Warren Siebrits (2016) Walter Battiss: 'I invented myself' The Jack Ginsberg Collection. An Ampersand Foundation publication, page 310.