WHERE ART HAPPENS IN NATURE
NIROX is committed to the global contemporary arts through its sculpture park, artist residency, workshops and outdoor concert venues.
COVERED SPACE
EXHIBITION
DRIAAN CLAASSEN & CATEHRINE ASH: EMERGENT PROPERTIES
NIROX Foundation, in collaboration with the Villa-Legodi Centre for Sculpture, invite you to the opening of Driaan Claassen and Catherine Ash’s latest exhibition, Emergent Properties, which will open in NIROX’s Covered Space on Saturday, 25 March 2023, at 2PM.
The exhibition includes a range of work, produced while in residence at the Centre between November 2022 and March 2023, alongside pre-existing works that speak to the duo’s abiding interests in psychology, neurology, and the workings of the natural world.
The exhibition opening at 2PM includes a walkabout with the artist-duo.
VILLA-LEGODI CENTRE FOR SCULPTURE
EXHIBITION
RICHARD FORBES:
AN ALPHABET OF FORM
In February 2023 Richard Forbes travelled to Riemvasmaak, Kalahari, to retrieve Rose Quartz from a large quarry. At the start of his residency he arranged the gathered rocks on the floor of the Villa-Legodi Centre for Sculpture Project Space. Each day, a rock is taken into the Workshop, transformed into a sculpture, and returned. At the core of this project is the artist’s ongoing engagement with fear. On the one hand is the desire to control or tame the world we inhabit. On the other, an acceptance of the impossibility thereof and an awareness of one’s mortality.
These dynamics play out in the violent extraction and manipulation of stone — a two way street that also leaves its mark on the artist, in the aches and pains that come with a lifetime of sculpture. At the same time, Forbes’s engagement is intended as a homage to the beauty and mystery of this finite planet; a dance with the unknown.
The catalogue, which you can download by clicking the button below, is born of a series of ongoing conversations with the artist. The first three revolve around different topics — ‘Erosion / Corrosion,’ ‘Wild / Tame’, ‘Human / Nature’. They are intended as an entry into his sculptural practice, and will be published in print in February 2024, alongside others, during a follow-up exhibition in the Covered Space.
INSTITUTIONAL COLLABORATION
MOLESKINE FOUNDATION
NIROX & MOLESKINE FOUNDATION
NIROX is happy to announce that it will be home to a selection of the Notebooks from the Moleskine Foundation Collection, including 37 notebooks created last year during the Joburg chapter of the AtWork “What comes first?” tour and AtWork Lab Soweto.
On top of making the Collection available to the Johannesburg community, this partnership will also bring forward the legacy generated by the creativity relay started 1500 notebooks ago, as NIROX residents will henceforth join our creative community and contribute to the Collection.
Join us for the first exhibition opening on May 23
INSTITUTIONAL COLLABORATION
CASA WABI
NIROX & FUNDACION CASA WABI
Fundación Casa Wabi and NIROX are happy to announce a new collaboration between their Institutions in Mexico and South Africa, to take place in 2023/2024. The initiative is created to strengthen exchange between artists and creatives from these regions. The participants will be selected by invitation from each institution, within the parameters of their programs. The residencies available are: a six-week residency at Casa Wabi (Puerto Escondido,
Oaxaca) for one South African artist, and a six-week residency at NIROX (Cradle of Humankind, South Africa) for one former Mexican resident from Casa Wabi.
*Please note this is not an open call.
NIROX SCULPTURE PARK
CONFERENCE
Layers: Rock Art Across Space and Time
Layers: Rock Art Across Space and Time was conceived as a travelling exhibition that brings together the work of artists and scholars from Europe, Latin America, and Africa. Held in collaboration with the Embassies of Spain, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, France, Italy, Mexico, and Portugal, it foregrounds the impact of a particularly pivotal moment in human history and its ramifications in the present.
On 20 February, NIROX will host a conference at Workshop17’s Seminar Room (V&A Waterfront, Cape Town) with a selection of artists and scholars involved in the exhibition, intended to introduce Cape Town audiences to some of the exhibition’s core concerns, prior to the exhibition’s opening in March/April.
The exhibition is supported by The European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC). The first iteration at NIROX, located in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, runs from 26 November 2022 – 28 February 2023, before travelling to Cape Town and Johannesburg.
IN RESIDENCE
SUDEEP SEN
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SUDEEP SEN
Sudeep Sen [www.sudeepsen.org] will be the ‘NIROX writer & artist-in-residence’ from March 1 to May 31, 2023. During that time, he will carry out research and writing assignments,explore the interface between writing and his photographic practice, collaborate with local musicians, artists and designers, participate in writing and related workshops with local Universities, deliver talks and give readings, and feature as a central figure in the‘WORDS Literary & Arts Festival’ to be held in the NIROX Sculpture Park. He will also participate in workshops and tutorials with youth, through NIROX hosting of the Columba Leadership Academy and NIROX extensive programs with private and public schools throughout Gauteng. Additionally, he will a ‘visiting writer/artist’ at possible partner venues that NIROX are either aligned to or working on: www.farmhouse58.com, www.satyagrahahouse.com, www.dorp.co.za, https://boschendal.com/.
IN RESIDENCE
RICHARD FORBES
RICHARD FORBES
During his residency, Richard Forbes will explore his intimate relationship with what he calls ‘raw and tame materiality’ by creating new works in stone in the Centre’s Workshop. Works-in-progress will be shown simultaneously in the Project Space, accompanied by thoughts on paper and works that proceeded this period.
IN RESIDENCE
DRIAAN CLAASSEN AND CATHERINE ASH
DRIAAN CLAASSEN AND CATHERINE ASH
Driaan Claassen and Catherine Ash are back in residence at NIROX, completing the work they began in their previous residency towards the end of last year, working in the Villa-Legodi Centre for Sculpture Workshop, where they are making use of the electric kiln to produce a series of sculptures made out of ceramics, glass, and wood, that grapple with mental health. Their works foreground the use of wood as a mediator between glass and ceramics, making reference to the elements as a way to both ground and connect the internal and external, physical and mental, aspects of the human anatomy; a connection which is also apparent in the case of trees and neurons that take on a Lichtenberg or dendritic-type pattern.
The works will be exhibited alongside pre-existing works in the Covered Space, opening on 25 March 2023.
RESIDENCY
PAST
INGA SOMDYALA
During his residency (1 – 28 February 2023), Inga Somdyala aims to create a site-specific land art installation, making use of the Education Hub to dedicate some time to writing more consistently. As with his more recent residencies elsewhere, he intends to collect soil from NIROX and the surrounding area, to be used in his work, and to bury a few pieces of canvas, thus making Gauteng the third province in which Somdyala has buried canvas since 2021.
RESIDENCY
PAST
MARIO MACILAU
Mário Macilau is a multidisciplinary artist and activist, best known for his photographic work and he is considered one of the “key figures” among the new generation of Mozambican artists. He was born in 1984 in Maputo, as do many children, working hard to help support his family in what were difficult circumstances in Mozambique. Macilau is currently living and working between Maputo, Lisbon and Cape Town and he has travelled extensively for his work and he has lived and worked in British Columbia in Canada, Barcelona, Madrid, Miami, New York, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Lagos, Nairobi, La Paz, Nairobi, and Bahia for many years. Over the years Mário Macilau has developed an art style that evokes emotion through his unique choice of subjects and his ability to connect with them.
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