Artists - Sculpture

George Kockott

beach pebbles on bamboo

George Kockott has worked with wood all his life. First he was a forester, then he served a five year apprenticeship as a carpenter/joiner, where he refined his skills in cabinetmaking and design. His holistic approach to sculpture today has been influenced by his experience gained in yacht construction, earth building, development agriculture, nature conservation, and wilderness leadership. Driftwood Studios was established at Rainbow Valley near East London, South Africa, in July 2007, as a sculpture studio . Here, George produces work in a variety of media, with a preference for materials which are recycled, sourced locally and characteristic of the Eastern Cape. In 2008, he was a finalist for the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum Biennial Award.

Russel Chitanda

driftwood and recycled tea-bags

Working in conjunction with original T-bags, Russel Chitanda uses their painted recycled tea-bags to adorn his fabric sails, which flutter above the rough wooden boats he sculpts and paints from driftwood he salvages on Hout Bay beach;- the perfect environmentally friendly artefact.

Sibusiso Maphumulo

wood

Sibusiso is synonmous with angels. He began carving his divine interpretations some years back, and although each angel is unique and different, they all have an element of attitude. Sibusiso was a key artist in the co-operative that formed the BAT centre on Durban’s foreshore; a cutting edge conglomerate for local artists in the post apartheid years.

Birdwoods

scrap metal sculpture

Louise Stobart was a farmer’s daughter and a farmer’s wife, who lived most of her life in the rural bush of Zimbabwe. But like many, she and her family were forced to relocate and now reside in New Zealand. When in Zimbabwe, Louise, who had no formal art training, formed a very successful company called Birdwoods. Since her departure, Birdwoods has been run by Joy Denton. Louise does all the designing, and a skilled team of craftsmen and women weld her creations in scrap metal from old oil drums. Each piece is made by hand, and therefore unique. While rust is an inherent part of each sculpture given the nature of the base material, each sculpture has been treated to prevent further deterioration and can happily sit in or outdoors.

Karen Sinovitch

driftwood

Aside from being a well-known South African ceramic artist, Karen Sinovich is also a sculptor who searches her surroundings for natural objects with which to build her creations.
As with her ceramics, Karen i sinspired by the ocean, beaches and rocks around her, from where she sources all manner of treasures. Her work is naive and simple and portrays humour. Her favourite subject of boats, using driftwood, remind her of days spent at the seaside.

Mark Forbes

resin bronze & wood

Mark Forbes was born in Johannesburg, the son of a sculptor. Whilst taking his B.A. in Fine Arts at the University of South Africa, he undertook his military training, and was transferred to the Pretoria art department. Here he learnt lost wax bronze casting and he designed and sculpted many trophies, exhibition pieces and monuments for the army. On leaving the military in 1982, he held his first public exhibition in Johannesburg. The success of this led to a number of corporate commissions. In 1992, Mark launched his ‘Bush Calls’ range of wildlife sculpture. These are ‘cold-cast bronzes’, cast in a resin and then given a bronze finish. The sculptures are then often mounted on wild olive bases, which is an indigenous wood of South Africa.

Tim Dlamini

raku-fired ceramic

Tim is a young ceramic sculptor who works under the tutelage of Trayci Tompkins and favours the raku firing method. His Dlamini families are a series of figures he creates, each one portraying his thoughts out of the top of his head, while his Fishermen expand his head gear theme. His angels have calm, beatified expressions with wonderfully funky hair by contrast. Tim is fast becoming a recognised name in South Africa, through the Zulu-Lulu studio, and he is consistently a sell-out success at Pietermaritzburg’s annual outdoor art exhibition.

Guruve

stone sculpture

Guruve specialises in stone sculpture from Zimbabwe, often known as the Shona art movement. Shona sculpture is widely accepted as the most important art movement to emerge from Africa in the twentieth century. In 1957, Frank McEwen was appointed as the first curator of the new National Gallery in Harare. He had previously been curator at the Rodin Museum, Paris and had links with various artists of the time, including Picasso and Matisse. McEwen encouraged the artists to look inward, to find their so-called tribal sub consciousness and express it through their art. Over the following fifty years, many first and second generation artists became famous worldwide. Some sculptors now command exorbitant prices and many high-profile international celebrities collect. Other sculptors are less well known, but their work no less appealing, largely due to the tactile nature of the very material in which they sculpt. 

Harry

Founded by Arthur Azevedo in the early 1970’s, scrap metal sculpture has become an art form synonymous with Zimbabwe, and has now spread across the border into South Africa. Long before recycling became trendy, resourceful African artists were seeing the potential in used oil drums, nuts, bolts and plumbing pipes, and the result is an continuing creation of humorous and realistic pieces which provide a topical statement in the decor of a room or the ambiance of a garden setting. Harry is one such resourceful artist in the Cape region of South Africa, who specialises in cows. Whilst rust is an inherent part of any scrap metal sculpture we recommend an annual coating of a clear anti-rust varnish if the piece is to reside outdoors.

Benard Nkanjo

stone birds

Benard was born and educated in Highfield, Harare. During school he would visit his relative Garrison Machinjili and it was there that he was first exposed to stone sculpting. Once he had seen the work he knew that he wanted to do nothing else. So after completing his O’levels in 1992, he became apprenticed to Garrison. He spent three years working with him, before leaving to work on his own in Chitungwiza. A keen observer of nature, he regularly visits the city’s dams and rivers to watch birds in their natural habitat. He is never without his sketchbook, which he uses to record their different poses. He works mostly in the various serpentine stones but prefers to use opal, when it is available. Always cheerful and hard working, Benard is starting to find a place for himself in the ranks of Zimbabwe’s new generation of stone sculptors.

Tania Babb

porcelain

Tania Babb was born in Zimbabwe in 1967. She studied graphic design at the Ruth Prowse School of Art in Cape Town in 1985, before becoming apprenticed to Barbara Jackson, the well-known ceramic sculptress, in 1986. Since then, Tania has taken part in group shows annually in South Africa, and has had work shown in UK, Germany, New Zealand and USA. Now a full-time ceramic sculptress based in Cape Town, Tania has opened her own gallery in Wynburg and is constantly developing new designs. Her work has a whimsical appeal and is highly collectable.

Michael Davies

limited edition bronzes

Mike’s formal introduction to art started in 1979 when he enrolled at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town. He started off as a young photographer, trying to capture photographs of a nations dream to be free. But there was a natural tendency to gravitate towards creating metal sculptures, born from his earlier engineering experiences and his family roots in the South African gold mining industry on the Witwatersrand.
In his original steel sculptures, the raw energy of the welding process creates abstract textures in the metal which is further enriched in the later bronze castings, with the addition of subtle colour tones in the final patina. Mike’s inspiration and ideas are drawn directly from his frequent excursions into the Southern African bushveld and other remote wilderness areas. This provides him with an opportunity to reflect, observe and record. “Although my sculptures are a personal interpretation, and to a certain extent represent objects of beauty, I hope the underlying metaphor will illuminate the desperate need to conserve and protect our natural heritage areas from further extermination.”

Richard Jack

iron castings

Richard Jack describes himself as a mixed media artist. Having combined various materials in sculpture, painting and graphics since the mid 70’s, the main direction of his work in recent years has been with sculpture, combining wood, stone and steel, and most recenlty collaborating with his son on iron castings. He has become fascinated with the exploration of form, balance, movement, light and texture, often juxtaposing natural shapes with carved angles to create a specific sentiment. Born in Zimbabwe, Richard grew up in South Africa, only returning to his homeland in 1981 after Independence. After living in the oppressive regimes of both Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa, it was a relief to him to be able to create freely in an aura of optimism. However, with the advent of economic collapse and political instability in 2001, Richard concluded that, “politics is corrupt everywhere” and reluctantly moved his family to England, where he has been tutoring at the University of Creative Arts in Surrey. He remains one of Zimbabwe’s foremost and important artists, having exhibited extensively in Africa and Europe. Sothebys has recently sold two large sculptures by Richard.

Jeff Mwazha

animals in wire

Originally from Zimbabwe, Jeff, like so many of his contemporaries, now lives in South Africa. He has been practising his wire art form for many years but by working in galvanised wire has made a distinction for himself versus other artists. He aptly captures the attitude of his subject, whether it is the might of the ponderous elephant or the elegance of the graceful giraffe. Always on the look-out for new ideas, especially when it comes to recycling materials, Jeff has come up with a world-first; animals made from old headphones (see Craft). He is talented, likeable and ingenious and deserves to do well.

Boniface Chikwenhere

bird and fish sculptures in wood

Boniface Chikwenhere was born in 1981 in Kwekwe, Zimbabwe. He presently resides in Cape Town, South Africa with his wife and two children. He learnt the skills of patience and identification needed for carving at an early age from his uncles. As a child and throughout his teen years he worked diligently on these skills and now, all these years later, he finds himself deeply connected to his craft and to the material he uses. With each piece he creates he develops a greater respect for his art form and for the environment that surrounds him. He finds inspiration from marine, bird and wild life, flora and the human form. Fusing ancient driftwood with recycled materials like old iron, wire or metal, he produces eco-friendly art which make us aware of our need to preserve and conserve our ecosystem. Finding his raw material in nature’s ‘recycle bin’, he is always conscious of the responsibility he has to nature because he feels that his work ‘completes’ what the natural elements started. With a unique ability to connect with and identify shapes in driftwood, Boniface’s work is a celebration of nature’s natural calendar and signature, resulting in unique and rare individual pieces of art that cannot be copied or reproduced.