Cape Town Image: Olduvai

A Cape Town Iziko Museums tagged image from photographer – warrenski as published on Flickr.

Olduvai
Iziko Museums
Image by warrenski

The following article is courtesy of The Property Magazine:

UNCONVENTIONAL WELCOME

The Heerengracht is set to get another statue, one that will welcome visitors through the gateway of Africa.

One might wonder what Maria de Quellerie would make of them. She’s seen a lot come and go down the Heerengracht – including the sea – but nothing like the delightful tumble of miniature miners or the map men that might grace her future view of the Atlantic. Certainly, she’s seen versions of the wind-swept Valkyrie being blown down Adderley (though nothing so beautiful) and nothing could have prepared her for the kinetic starfish or the red giant…

What on earth are we talking about? Why, the finalists in the competition to design a sculpture for entrance to the new Convention Tower office block, of course. For ages, impressive statues of Jan van Riebeeck and his wife Maria have kept watch on the gateway to Africa from atop their pedestal in Adderley Street. Judging by the entries to the sculpture design competition, they will soon find themselves in more colourful company.

One has to applaud the competition’s sponsors, Madison Property Fund Managers and Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC), for adding some new art to the heart of our city. We hope other developers will follow their lead.

The brief to entrants specified a design that could be up to six metres high, wrought in metal, wood or marble, and that would use as its reference the fact that it would be positioned at the gateway to Cape Town and, by extension, Africa. The brief also called for the statue to be eye-catching: ‘By day the sculpture should be a powerful visual landscape and at night it should draw the public’s attention from a considerable distance,’ read the Madison/CTICC prospectus.

At the time of going to press, five finalist marquettes (small models) had been selected by Madison and the CTICC, and by the time The Property Magazine is in your hands, the winner will have been announced by the judges, namely Dennis Fabian of the architectural practice that designed Convention Tower; director of art collections for Iziko Museums, Marilyn Martin; Dennis Skeat of the CTICC; and Mokena Makeka of Makaka Design Lab.

The executive director of Madison, Mike Flax, says the judges faced an exceptionally tough decision because, in his view, ‘all the entrants were meritorious’. The Madison press release announcing the finalists, describes them as follows:

‘Tsai Design Studios entry, entitled Spiral, is a pure white metal sculpture in which two intertwined spirals with horizontal "starfish" components rotate around a centre pivot like a vertical windmill. The designers say that the artwork, which will be six metres high, will have a sea theme, reminding the viewer of anemones or the spinal column of a whale.

‘Strijdom van der Merwe has submitted an intriguing group of five thin, flat metal silhouette human figures, each representing one of the world’s great continents.These are layered with coloured sections of a map of the continents and testify that Cape Town is not only a gateway to Africa but an international meeting point.

‘Royston Lamond’s sculpture is reminiscent of the famous Samothracian Winged Victory. It is entitled South-Easter Turning North-Wester and its figure is an exuberant, draped female form with the torso thrust forward and the head thrown back. The sculpture is designed to rotate and face the wind, whatever its direction. If selected as the winner, Lamond plans to model the sculpture in clay and then cast it in bronze, which will be given a silver nitrate patina capable of reflecting light by day and by night. The overall impact should be one of ethereal beauty.

‘Jonathan Munnik has come up with a design, Reach, which is more playful and innocent than its rivals. It depicts seven children’s figures, all wearing quaint helmets, in a precarious circus-type balancing act. Four of the figures are lifted above those on the base and reach up to a joyous but undefined goal. Munnik says that the sculpture, which will be cast in concrete or dolomite, represents our future and the support required "to improve humanity".

‘Gavin Younge‘s sculpture will be a nine-metre-high human figure, red in colour and made up of two thick steel plates curved sideways to resemble the aerofoil shape of a leaf in the wind. The figure’s surface is networked by vein or skeleton-type decorations and rifts that will act as wind vanes. Younge says that his work, known as Olduvai, harks back to the gorge of that name in the Rift Valley and is, therefore, a tribute to mankind’s evolutionary perseverance in Africa, the Cradle of Mankind.’

One of these sculptures will stand at the head of the Adderley Street-Heerengracht welcoming committee, with the Van Riebeecks behind and Rhodes, from the Gardens, encouraging visitors northwards. We look forward to the unveiling. Whichever statue the judges choose, we think Maria would approve.