Categories
Sculpture

Jetty Square

In 2005 Earthworks Landscape Architects (ELA) invited me to work on the design for a new public space in Cape Town’s foreshore – land that was reclaimed from the sea within the last century. I produced a group of ghost shark sculptures, that swim through air 3 metres above the ground, pivoting to point into the wind like weathervanes. They emerge from a cobble pattern of stylised water swirls, designed by Diekie van Nieeuwenhuizen of ELA.

The sculptures make a sound when a strong wind blows, through wind-flutes built into their gills. I worked with the musician Brendon Bussy to design and make the flutes, and on the arrangements of tones across the sculptures. They have infrared sensors in their hollow noses, which move the flutes into position when a person passes below the shark. This layer of interaction is not operational; the square is not yet connected to the City’s electricity supply grid. The flutes are fixed ‘on’ at present, so if you visit the square on a windy day, you’ll hear the sharks sing. Cape Town gets very windy, especially in our springtime.

For more visit www.jettysquare.co.za

Categories
Writing

Design and Futures

In early 2019 studio lead Ralph Borland was asked if he would contribute an article on the theme of ‘Design and Futures’ to a special edition of the Journal of Futures Studies.

I wrote the article while in the thick of working on Dubship I – Black Starliner, a @spacecraft.africa project, in bursts late at night and early in the morning after working on the sculpture, thinking ‘why do I do this to myself?!’ but I was very happy with the result. Thanks to the editors Cher Potter and Stuart Candy for inviting me! I couldn’t resist the opportunity to write about my work in the context of futures studies, a really fascinating field, and there was a pleasing resonance in working at the same time on a sculpture which combines future vision with 800 years of technological history.

Ralph Borland’s Instagram post

The article is titled ‘SPACECRAFT: A Southern Interventionist Art Project’ in Volume 23 no.4 June 2019 of the Journal of Futures Studies. It is freely accessible online at jfsdigital.org ⁣⁣

SPACECRAFT XW01 2019
Categories
Writing

Manual

There is pleasure in writing catalogue essays for artists – at the best of times it becomes a collaboration with the artist and their work, revealing aspects of the work that the artist may not have fully articulated even to themselves, as well as assisting them in communicating the concerns of their art to a public. It requires the work of a detective, conducting a deep reading of and engagement with the art works, and the work of an artist, willing to make word pictures and word sculptures for the reader.

Ralph Borland is proud of the results of this process in his catalogue essay for the sculptor Michele Mathison, for his exhibition Manual at What If The World gallery in Cape Town in 2015. View a pdf of the text here, and see a small extract below.

In ‘Dig down’, dozens of bare-metal spades with hard black-rubber handles dig and scrape at the ground, fused together in a multiple-exposure of work – turning now left, now right, forward and back, up and down. They are a condensed expression of a few minutes of labour, made monument – a sculptural expression of a work and motion study. In their hardness and their military tones, worn metal, they hint at the violence of work: this exertion, this digging and scraping, this biting into and relocating of unseen earth.

Manual, Ralph Borland (2015)
Dig down, Michele Mathison 2014
Categories
Curating

Design and Violence

Ralph Borland was one of the lead curators on this 2016 Science Gallery Dublin rendition of an exhibition concept first developed at New York Museum of Modern Art.

https://dublin.sciencegallery.com/designandviolence

Categories
Curating

Future Present

Future Present – Design in a time of urgency is an exhibition in development at Science Gallery Detroit, due to open in September 2020, on which Ralph Borland is one of the curators.

https://opencall.sciencegallery.com/design

Categories
Kruskal Avenue Sculpture

Starling wind mobiles

Across the site, sculptures of Red-Winged Starlings rotate in the wind on top of striped poles. These starlings are clever and resourceful birds at home in nature or in the city, and found all down the East Coast of Africa from Somalia to Cape Town. Along with the grasses outside Elizabeth Park, both artworks draw playful attention to small natural elements of the space that might otherwise be overlooked, and reflect to the people who inhabit the site their own resourcefulness and tenacity as they go about their daily lives.

Categories
Kruskal Avenue Sculpture

Giant grasses

Giant grasses form an entrance to Elizabeth Park: they celebrate the persistence of nature in the city, monumentalizing the tiny grasses that grow up through cracks in the pavement. The work represents tenacity and fruitfulness, and flourishing on little. Along with the starling wind mobiles, both artworks draw playful attention to small natural elements of the space that might otherwise be overlooked, and reflect to the people who inhabit the site their own resourcefulness and tenacity as they go about their daily lives.