Dylan Lewis, Ian McCallum & Enrico Daffonchio at Kirstenbosch
Visitors to Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden are in for a thought-provoking experience with UNTAMED; a collaborative exhibition that explores the lost balance between humankind and nature.
Dylan Lewis is a South African sculptor with a reputation as one of the best in the world when it comes to capturing the animal form in bronze. Lewis has recently extended his sculpting talents to the human form. His primary inspiration is wilderness, and it is because of his deep passion for nature that Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden offers the perfect venue for this unique exhibition of his new bronzes.
For the first time Lewis will be collaborating with two other masters in their fields: Ian McCallum, an author, poet, psychiatrist, analytical psychologist and specialist wilderness guide and Enrico Daffonchio, an architect who specialises in sustainable design and building. Daffonchio designed the restaurant at the Cradle of Humankind, as well as Arts on Main, a unique blend of studio, commercial, residential and retail spaces that is the hub of Johannesburg’s creative community.
The culmination of this collaboration is UNTAMED, an evolving exhibition that opened in Cape Town´s Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in early June this year. Visitors to the garden will be invited into a temporary structure designed by Daffonchio, in which they will be able to view a selection of Lewis´s sculptures. They will also be able to follow a marked garden trail along which they will discover strategically placed monumental bronzes interspersed with McCallum´s prose and poetry.
The temporary structure will showcase contemporary, sustainable South African architecture, using solar power and natural light. The building will also feature a specially designed “living wall” of indigenous plants, highlighting the Kirstenbosch Garden team´s superb horticultural talents.
The exhibition will run for one year, and over that time almost a million visitors to Kirstenbosch will have the opportunity not only to see Dylan Lewis´s latest sculptures, but to also explore through architecture and a powerful narrative the theme of wilderness and what its loss entails to the human psyche. At a time when the destruction of our planet and the loss of its natural resources is so “top of mind”, it is hoped that these visitors will leave the exhibition viewing the relationship between human beings and nature in an entirely new light.
For more information about the exhibition or Dylan Lewis´s work, please contact us on +27 21 418 4527 or ctgallery@everard.co.za
