A fine balance

WORDS Debbie Loots

We featured artist slash designer Dahla Hulme in the winter editon of VISI, Escape to the Country. Now she has sent us some pics of her new work on show in her Art Is Design Is Art exhibition showing at the Tina Skukan Gallery in Pretoria until 22 August.

Provocative is the first term that comes to mind when engaging with sculptor Dahla Hulme’s prolific body of work. Living and working in Rosendal in the eastern Free State, she shares a gallery, Meerkatkolonie, with painter Michèle Nigrini.

Dahla’s fearless combination of familiar, often nostalgic, objects with contemporary elements (such as glass and polished wood or metal) is her signature. She has an acute and sympathetic relationship with the farmlands in the area, which bears testimony to another place and time, and to its people.

Abandoned implements and tools, their heavy toil at the hands of farmers, feature in her works. Through her astute reading and positioning of their forms in relation to other indigenous objects or substances, Dahla challenges conventional ideas around beauty and balance.

Her sculptures and functional art grace many offices and living spaces. As much as an eroded chunk of wood becomes a boardroom table, so the skulls of worker beasts are redressed and addressed in her signature style, reading as historic icons of a place and its people.

Meerkatkolonie 083 326 9651
Tina Skukan Gallery, Plot 6 Koedoeberg Road, Faerie Glen, Pretoria, 012 991 1733, www.tinaskukangallery.co.za

See more of Dahla’s work in VISI 67. The hottest read the chill has blown your way, expect 6 celebrated authors going wild, 80 pages of divine out-of-town hideaways, 30 reasons to chill out and nest, and over 30 prizes to be won, including a R9 000 weekend at Babylonstoren. Look out for the print version at selected retail outlets or buy the digital version right now.

While you’re at it, complete the readers survey and you could win one of 21 stylish watches, including a R21k Raymond Weil must-have and 20 Obaku ones (10 for ladies + 10 for men). Entry is only possible with the magazine in hand.