Category: Sculpture

We work on large scale sculpture projects combining digital and hand processes, working between 3D modelling and VR sculpting, laser-cutting and CNC-bending, and cutting and welding by hand.

Categories
Sculpture

Tambourine

In 2025 I produced a commissioned artwork for a new restaurant called Tambourine on Harrington Street in Cape Town. Tambourine is the latest project by Tobias Alter, owner of the Gorgeous George Hotel, who commissioned our African Robots & SPACECRAFT artwork Shapeshifting Chandelier, installed at the hotel in 2023.

Tobi was interested in our work with dichroic filters, developed during our project SUN for City of Cape Town, with Lorenzo Nassimbeni. Lorenzo and I had worked on the design of SUN over a period of years, and just before it was to be fabricated and installed, the City had to cancel several of their urban upgrade projects due to problems with their contractors, our site amongst them.

A maquette of SUN at about 1:5 scale (final piece was to be 2m diameter)

Dichroic material (architectural glass or a plastic film) reflects and refracts light in such a way that different colours appear from different angles – mainly between magenta and yellow. It has an effect a bit like light reflecting off oily water (you sometime see this in puddles in the street). It was developed for the aerospace industry, as an antiradiation coating on the windscreens of spaceships!

For Tambourine, I designed a system of 20 discs cut from Plexiglass and coated with dichroic film, suspended in adjustable brackets from the reflective metallic ceiling of the restaurant. They’re arranged in such a way that they can be illuminated by just two special narrow-beam spotlights (from Evica Direct). Light from the two spotlights reflects from disc to disc and creates compound pools of light on the upper walls of the restaurant.

Tambourine
A view of one corner of the installation

I think of this as a form of light painting, a fresco in coloured light. Though the lights and discs are static, there’s a feeling of animation about the installation – I think because our minds sense that there is movement in the bouncing of light across the ceiling, though of course much too fast to be perceived. We’ve tried out a bit of vape smoke in there, before the restaurant opened, and it looks pretty cool… we should bring a smoke machine in for a party sometime.

The project for me was really successful in that it met my objective to be interesting yet not distracting, to be beautiful but not impose on the space. The main feature of the restaurant is its food, and socialising with your friends. Feedback from staff and patrons has been very favourable – we really have created something with a unique feel.

Thanks to Amnova for their work fabricating the 3D-printed connectors for the brackets, which we designed together. Lasercutting by Numerical Creations, aluminium tubing from SalBev, bending of stainless steel members by Pure Steel and aluminium anodising by Cape Anodisers. And thanks to Tobi for the commission.

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
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.