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www.thevillagenews.co.za
26 August 2020
Writer Elaine Davie
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fter several delays due to the Covid-19 lockdown regulations, the long-awaited Hermanus FynArts Sculpture on the Cliffs exhibition was at last opened at Gearing’s Point on Saturday. The participating artists had been busy installing their works over the past two weeks and all but two of the 12 outdoor sculptures, which will be added in October, now grace the rugged cliffs along the coastline. Before the opening address by Prof Jane Taylor, who currently holds the Andrew W Mellon Chair in Aesthetic Theory and Material Performance at the University of the Western Cape, FynArts Festival Director Mary Faure thanked Pioneer Freight for their sponsorship and also expressed her gratitude to the Overstrand Municipality, Safe Security and ADT for their support of the project, which annually elicits much local interest and is enjoyed by all who visit Hermanus. The theme for this year’s Sculpture on the Cliffs is ‘Vertical Animal’, but as Emeritus Professor Gavin Younge, curator of the exhibition emphasises, “That’s Animal in the generic sense – as opposed to Vegetable and Mineral, although of course both are present in the diverse materials used. The aim was to allow the artists maximum freedom of expression and interpretation in exploring our relationship with nature.” Prof Younge has himself exhibited at FynArts
in the past as well as at the world’s biggest outdoor exhibition, known as ‘Sculpture by the Sea’ at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. This international event features over 100 pieces by sculptors from around the world and has been running for 22 years now. It stretches along 6 km of shoreline, providing a massive annual injection of revenue for the city and country. In preparing for this year’s event in Hermanus, Gavin sent out a call for proposals from 20 – 25 South African sculptors, from which he selected 12 for the exhibition. His decision was guided not only by the merit of each proposal, but by the challenges of the site and his desire for diversity, in terms of the artists’ location, length of experience, gender and demographics, as well as the materials to be employed. However, he emphasises that there was no question of tokenism; each artist was chosen with artistic excellence in mind. The site itself presents several challenges to artists creating large works: no drilling is permitted into the paving or rocks on the cliffs, the pieces will be subjected to extreme weather for the year they are on display and there is always the risk of vandalism. An interesting factor is the effect the environment will have on the artwork. It will often change character altogether when in place, as compared to when it was still in the artist’s studio. A casualty during the period of erecting the sculptures for this year’s exhibition was Karen Lijnes’ beautiful ceramic mobile, ‘Freedom Tree’.
PHOTO: Taylum Meyer
Sculptures explore relationship with nature
‘Taking Flight’ – Jaco Sieberhagen. Presented in silhouette, a running boy dissolves into a flight of seagulls. The artist uses this medium to comment on the divide between society, culture and nature.
PHOTO: Hedda Mittner
FynArts Festival Director Mary Faure at the opening of the 2020 Sculpture on the Cliffs exhibition at Gearing’s Point on Saturday. Behind her, from left, are Gavin Younge, the curator of the exhibition, Nanette Ranger, one of the participating artists and Jane Taylor, who gave the opening address. About 20 minutes after it had been hoisted into place during one of our recent storms, it came crashing down and she and her engineer husband had to go back to square one to devise a more stable means of anchoring it.
tains. “What I would really have loved to see is the appointment and training of local guides to walk visitors around the exhibition, as well as the running of workshops for school children based on the work on show.”
Although FynArts provides a small amount of funding for each of the selected artists, Gavin decries the lack of funding for the Arts in general in South Africa. Works of this size and complexity are, of course, enormously expensive to produce. “It would be wonderful, too, if local businesses were prepared to come to the party with sponsorships of their own,” he main-
Taken together, this year’s exhibition has a wonderful sense of playfulness about it, from Guy du Toit’s ‘Hare with baggage waiting for his ship to come in’ and Right Mukore’s outsized wooden goose with a bell in its beak, which he calls ‘Watchdog’, to Wilma Cruise’s two little baboons on a bench, with its invitation to ‘Come sit’. Hermanus artist, Jaco Sieberhagen’s
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