SA design hits Basel

WORDS Nadine Botha

For the first time, South African design is out in full force at the Design Miami/Basel event in Switzerland, starting today and running until 16 June 2013. The work of 17 designers and artists is being showcased by Southern Guild.

“We are extremely excited to be presenting the fresh voice of South African collectable design to a Basel audience at the most important design forum in the world,” said Trevyn McGowan, founder and director of Southern Guild. 

Southern Guild is South Africa’s most high-profile proponent of luxury indigenous design and regularly curates and commissions large-scale exhibitions of unique once-off pieces by the crème of our country’s artists and designers. The most recent exhibition in South Africa was Heavy Metal at the Woodstock Foundry, Cape Town, in February and the annual Southern Guild exhibition at the Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg, in August 2012 (read more here). 

The work showing at Design Miami/Basel is mostly drawn from these two exhibitions, including Joe Paine’s steampunk-flavoured crank desk that VISI nominated for the Most Beautiful Object in South Africa award at this year’s Design Indaba. Also drawn from last year’s exhibition is Dokter and Misses’s hand-painted solid wood cabinet inspired by Burkina Faso mud dwellings. Porky Hefer’s leather weaver’s nest for humans will also be on display. 

The ongoing collaboration between furniture designer Gregor Jenkin and artist William Kentridge, initiated at last year’s exhibition, has produced a new chair inspired by the artist’s torn-paper work. Willowlamp will also show exquisite brand new mandala-themed chandeliers. And sculptor Dylan Lewis embarks on an exploration of the functional with a monumental, abstract console.

Work by the likes of Andile Dyalvane (watch our video interview here), Brett Murray, Bronze Age and Conrad Hicks was selected from the Heavy Metal exhibition. Other designers include Michaella Janse van Vuuren, Ceramic Matters and Laurie Wiid van Heerden.

The press release says it best: “Artisanal, handmade and cerebral, South African design elicits a physical response as much as it invites a viewer to think. Some of this experiential quality derives from the handmade nature of the work. Its distinctiveness is grounded in social and political realities, narrative, a true bond with nature and a sense of human connectedness with little interest in passing trends or in highly polished, technologically driven visions of design.”

Well, Design Miami/Basel, and Europe in general, we hope you get the message, with love, from Africa. VISI can’t think of a better cast of designers to be delivering it!

www.southernguild.co.za

Kemang Wa Lehulere has won the 15th Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel, read more here.