This morning, as rain soaked the Cape after weeks of crisp but clear winter days, I found myself at the beautiful Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens at the foot of Table Mountain (largely hidden in the mist) for the media launch of the Dylan Lewis, Enrico Daffonchio and Ian McCallum exhibition, UNTAMED.
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| The UNTAMED Exhibition |
This collaborative exhibition explores, visually and most beautifully, the lost balance between humankind and nature.
Guests at the launch hurried out of the rain and into the welcoming warmth of the
Silver Tree Restaurant, shaking droplets off umbrellas and drying out in front of the massive logfire. While we enjoyed warming cups of coffee we listened as each of the three participants explained UNTAMED from their own points of view.
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| Dylan Lewis (speaking) with Enrico Daffonchio (white top) and Ian McCallum (middle) |
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.
Enrico Daffonchio, an architect who specialises in sustainable design and building, has designed the restaurant at the Cradle of Humankind among a number of ‘green’ buildings in South Africa.
Ian McCallum is an author, poet, psychiatrist, analytical psychologist and specialist wilderness guide. His latest book, Wild Leadership, is due to be released soon.
Each man brings his passion for nature and the wild into his contribution to the project, which does not claim to give any answers to the protection of our natural world, but rather looks at the question of why we have allowed things to get to the place they are, ecologically.
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| Inside the exhibition |
We then headed out of doors and across to the main site of UNTAMED, a temporary building featuring a ‘living wall’ vertical garden system, which is open to the elements. The structure houses Lewis’s phenomenal, beautiful sculptures of half man half beast, mythical creatures with wings, horns, human feet and limbs and claws, in various frozen positions that are filled with a variety of emotions.
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| Living wall and entrance |
And McCullum’s poems and writings interspersed between the sculptures bring it all together perfectly.
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| A visitor reading the poems |
Personally, I found the exhibition very moving, almost spiritual, and the mood was enhanced by the smell of earth and rain.
One very large sculpture is positioned outside the building and we were told that a total of 8 of these large versions of some of the sculptures are to be placed in various locations around the gardens (3 are already up) – by November these will all be installed, and McCallum’s poetry will form part of a ‘pilgrimage’ of sorts visitors to the gardens can take as they walk from one to the next.
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| One of the larger sculptures inside |
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.
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| Dylan Lewis |
Don't miss this incredible exhibition - another very good reason to visit our wonderful botanical gardens - whatever the weather.
