CURRENT
FARIEDA NAZIER
MUSEE DE LA BETE
NIROX COOL ROOM
FEBRUARY 2025
Supported by the Claire & Edoardo Villa Will Trust, Love Default explores the complex range of learned behaviours we perform in our relationship with intimacy, love, shame, disfunction and trauma. Through a playful process and visual language, I attempt to re-construct and re-think our individual and collective ‘love default’; a term I adopt to define unconscious, learned behavioural patterns. Viewed as an attempt to open up the conversation and consider alternative, more conscious ways to exist, my art-making draws on a range of inspirations, from Homer’s Odyssey and the myth of Arethusa and Alpheus to existentialist philosophy and pop psychology. Through an intuitive mash-up of iconography — from ancient civilisations to popular culture and futurism — I question established traditions and create alternative encounters. My process begins by photographing clouds, commemorating and documenting significant moments (both socio-political and personal) in time, from which to make sketches. I then translate these references into multi- dimensional art objects using materials such as wood, concrete, paint, mixed media and fabric. There is a strong link to materiality, and my exploration of circular economies, post-futures and the current climate crisis. My attempt to find form is also an attempt to find meaning.
- Sophia Van Wyk
SOPHIA VAN WYK
LOVE DEFAULT
NIROX COVERED SPACE
2 NOVEMBER - 2 MARCH
Supported by the Claire & Edoardo Villa Will Trust, Love Default explores the complex range of learned behaviours we perform in our relationship with intimacy, love, shame, disfunction and trauma. Through a playful process and visual language, I attempt to re-construct and re-think our individual and collective ‘love default’; a term I adopt to define unconscious, learned behavioural patterns. Viewed as an attempt to open up the conversation and consider alternative, more conscious ways to exist, my art-making draws on a range of inspirations, from Homer’s Odyssey and the myth of Arethusa and Alpheus to existentialist philosophy and pop psychology. Through an intuitive mash-up of iconography — from ancient civilisations to popular culture and futurism — I question established traditions and create alternative encounters. My process begins by photographing clouds, commemorating and documenting significant moments (both socio-political and personal) in time, from which to make sketches. I then translate these references into multi- dimensional art objects using materials such as wood, concrete, paint, mixed media and fabric. There is a strong link to materiality, and my exploration of circular economies, post-futures and the current climate crisis. My attempt to find form is also an attempt to find meaning.
- Sophia Van Wyk
GROUP EXHIBITION
SMALL THINGS
VILLA-LEGODI CENTRE FOR SCULPTURE
The exhibition includes a range of models, The exhibition includes a range of models, maquettes, experiments,
and artworks which have led, or will lead, to largescale versions in the park.
At its heart is a curiosity about how different artists approach the transition from a model or maquette to realising larger work. For example, how do artists visualise their ideas, make informed decisions about the kinds of materials they want to use, or test the structural integrity of their work? What sort of changes can one anticipate in the process, and how important is it for artists to remain responsive to the site or context of exhibition, especially when exhibiting outdoors, in a less controlled environment? How important is it today, with the advent of 3D digital technologies, to be able to experiment materially, and what sort of consequences might the use of such digital renders have on the physical outcome?
Included on exhibition are works by Beth Diane Armstrong, Joni Brenner, Marco Cianfanelli, Richard John Forbes, Dean Hutton, Ebru Kurbak, Michele Mathison, Nandipha Mntambo, Farieda Nazier, Brett Rubin, and Sophia van Wyk
PAST
WILLEM BOSHOFF
ASSEMBLAGE AND COLLAGE
VILLA LEGODI CENTRE FOR SCULPTURE
21 SEPTEMBER - 3 NOVEMBER 2024
This exhibition included five large wall-based artworks by Boshoff, made from objects glued, welded, and bolted. These include ASH (2018), ELM (2021), and OAK (2022); Pointless (2021); and BLUE (2021); as well as GREY — a work-in-progress created using Guineafowl feathers that the artist will develop during a workshop with students from the University of the Free State, to demonstrate processes of assemblage and collage.
As a sculptural technique, assemblage has been defined as the ‘unlikely’ combination of found objects, often to surprising effect. While primarily associated with drawing and painting, collage, in turn, is described as the arrangement of ‘pieces of paper, photographs, fabric and other ephemera’ on a ‘supporting surface’. Derived from the French “coller”, meaning to glue or stick, collage often makes use of cut-outs, allowing for the re- contextualisation and re-configuration of singular, stagnant meanings, concepts, or representations.
The exhibition was supported by NEDBANK PRIVATE WEALTH, the Claire & Edoardo Villa Will Trust, and the University of the Free State. Our thanks to Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg, for insuring the artworks in transit.
GROUP SHOW
RELIEF
VILLA LEGODI CENTRE FOR SCULPTURE
29 JUNE - 2 SEPTEMBER
The exhibition focuses on an age-old tradition from a variety of contemporary perspectives, foregrounding different approaches to relief work as a mode of storytelling and its relationship to sculpture in the round.
Held in partnership with Griffin Art Projects, the exhibition includes works by Dada Khanyisa, Collen Maswanganyi, Johan Moolman, Simon Moshapo Jnr, John Nkhoma, Usen Obot, Ben Tuge, and Xwalacktun.
It includes both pre-existing works as well as those produced during a 10-day woodcarving workshop, held in partnership with the Kromdraai Impact Hub in the lead up to the show.
OUPA SIBEKO & KAMOGELO WALAZA
KO GAE
NIROX RESIDENCY & COOL ROOM
3 MARCH - 26 MAY
Experimenting with personal belongings, archival materials, multi-media and installation from a variety of social and cultural perspectives, Oupa Sibeko’s work draws on his own recollections and how they have shaped his personalities, animating his actions and experiences. Ultimately we ask you, the viewer, to consider your own memories; to come into the space, play, and make use of KO GAE to activate your own childhood memories. We invite you KO GAE as an active space to participate and remember the child in you as you play.
ABDUS SALAAM
INSAAN
NIROX RESIDENCY, COOL ROOM, SCREENING ROOM
& COVERED SPACE
3 MARCH - 26 MAY
Abdus Salaam’s first solo institutional exhibition will open April 27th at Nirox Foundation following his six week long residency. This is his first residency during the month long fast of Ramadan and the theme of this work will be that of Love with a capital L in its terrestrial, etherea and Divine forms. The title of this exhibition will be ‘ﺇِﻧﺴَﺎﻥ‘ transliterated as ‘insaan’ meaning human being, a word that when broken down to its roots in Arabic as انـس (uns) meaning ‘intimate or love’ as well as نَسِيَ (nasyia), meaning forgetful, defines the human being as both the intimate one and the forgetful one. This poetic fragrance is often alluded to by the mystics and scholars of Islam as it so poignantly delivers us to the essence of humanity being that of love, a reality that we often forget and one that is most appropriate considering our ongoing communal self harm and the location of Nirox within the Cradle of Humankind where some of the oldest remains of early humans have been found and studied.
Exhibiting across three spaces at Nirox, Salaam will present his largest paintings to date, a series of sculptures, gildings, a video work and an original musical composition that was written and recorded at Nirox - to also be released on sound streaming platforms late April. During these six weeks he will also produce work for 1-54 New York and RMB-Latitudes art fair’s curated sculpture pavilion as well as a permanent sculpture for Nirox Foundation’s Sculpture Park.
RICHARD JOHN FORBES:
PRAXIS
NIROX COVERED SPACE. / SCREENING ROOM
10 FEB – 31 MAR 2024
Held a year after his residency at the Villa-Legodi Centre for Sculpture, Forbes returns to showcase the finished body of work, alongside glass-blown sculptures and prints produced over the course of the year. As writes Sean O’Toole for the forthcoming publication, ‘Forbes’s mesmerising rose quartz sculptures embody sculptural restraint. Often half-formed and incomplete, they showcase his understanding of moderation as a necessary gesture in sculpture.’
The exhibition also includes a new film in the Screening Room, titled Guava (2024), coupled with a cameo appearance of Shy Restrained Pink Thing (ongoing). Sometimes inflated, sometimes deflated, the latter is described by Ashraf Jamal as an ‘anthropomorphised intimate’, that makes evident the ‘wear and tear’ of life through a ‘choreography of movement and stillness, liberation and abduction’. This sense of restraint is echoed in the display of Forbes’s glass-blown works. In contrast, Forbes’s spinning-top prints, produced in collaboration with participants in different parts of the world, are ‘pulled from plates that hold the marks of the spinning tops.’ As writes Chloë Reid in her contribution to the book, ‘Minor imbalances and asymmetries in the tops, in the techniques or gestures of the participant, in the plate itself, and on the surface beneath, contribute to a field of spiralling marks, each infinitely unique... The prints have a celestial quality. Layers of marks and spherical forms revel in oblique space.’
To learn more about Forbes’s practice, and the rose quartz works on exhibition, access the catalogue by clicking the button below.
Both the exhibition and publication are supported by the Claire & Edoardo Villa Will Trust.
SEAN BLEM: RESONANCE
A TEN YEAR RETROSPECTIVE
VILLA-LEGODI CENTRE FOR SCULPTURE
17 FEB – 3 MAR 2024
Sean Blem completed his first residency at NIROX in 2014, where he created a body of work titled Hyperextension. Through sculpture and painting Blem merged his interests in communication and language — evident in earlier series like Form (2004–2011) — with anatomy and object resonance; how particular forms take on a life of their own.
On his return in 2016, Blem created the Mastaba series, cross-referencing early memories with one of the most ancient and resilient pre-pyramidic forms. That said, Blem is not one to explain his work, opting to set up the parameters for audiences to experience it on their own terms.
His work often includes hidden references or aspects that are unknown, from choice pigments and the coating of works to specific material decisions, which all contribute to Blem’s multi-referential vocabulary.
Produced from wild olive, his latest body of work continues the evolution of this engagement with materials, drawing on the structural and medicinal properties of indigenous wood and its cultural and historic resonance in South Africa and further afield.
To learn more about Blem's work, click the button below.
OLDER EXHIBITIONS
