Kalahari: A Season At Tswalu

In 2015, Nic worked as Artist in Residence at Tswalu Kalahari, a private game reserve in South Africa's Northern Cape Province. From February until June 2015, he and his family lived on this extraordinary piece of land, with permission to move about freely on the 120,000ha reserve to find plant specimens that depicted the landscape best, to be cast as bronze and silver sculptures. 

Though the timing of the residency was initially planned to coincide with the rainy season, which usually creates a wealth of flowers, bulbs in particular, to emerge, during Nic's stay there was only just enough rainfall to sustain the very minimum with which the Kalahari can function. As none of the promised flowers materialised, the plant matter chosen for this exhibition highlights the aridness of the terrain at Tswalu during Nic's residency.

The 22 sculptures which Nic created at Tswalu, a depiction of the Kalahari's distinctive desert plants and trees, formed his second solo exhibition: 'Kalahari: a season at Tswalu' held at Everard Read Johannesburg in October 2015. The seminal work on this show was undoubtedly Nic's iconic Boscia albitrunca, a reclining bronze tree measuring 4,2 meters in length.


EXHIBITION IMAGES

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A percentage of sales from this exhibition were donated to The Tswalu Foundation, which supports conservation research in the Kalahari.

Read more about Nic and his family's experience in the Kalahari here

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