Jo Roets’ most recent solo exhibition entitled MURG consisted of 22 clay sculptural works inspired by bones and the history and biology behind these body parts.

“Since childhood, I’ve had a deep love for bones. Perhaps it was the excitement of looking for them and finding them. I am not sure why this enchantment with bones is so strong in me,” the Capetonian artist explains. “Maybe it’s because they are reminders of our mortality – the impermanence of life and a return to earth after death.”

Jo calls the process of her art-making “light relief sculpture – based on how she adapts her medium, air drying clay which is rolled out into paper-thin segments and then built upon each other. She then uses tools to score the forms with patterns, holes, indentations and incisions.

“My initial thoughts for this body of work was focused on fossilised bones. But art-making is an organic process, and plans can easily move in a different direction. A gut feeling surfaced and the phrase “Ek voel dit in die murg van my bene” became a mantra in the back of my mind. From this, the work for this exhibition grew,” she elaborates on the process.

READ MORE: 4 Local Ceramicists We Love

The concept behind the exhibition is not related to being scientifically correct but represents a metaphorical search for a feeling. “My process raised questions like – Seeing that we have captured DNA images, what would our gut feeling look like if we could capture it visually?” Jo asks. “And would everyone’s gut DNA look the same or would some be more intricate than others? Why do some of us trust our gut and why are some oblivious to this powerful tool? Is this because following one’s gut is not always a comfortable experience? How much of this power do we give over to a higher power rather than honouring our own intuition?”

Cracks and engravings on some works represent the ancient language of oracle bones and their relation to predictions, while the gold leaf on some works gives a nod to Kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold.

The exhibition can be viewed online via her website, here.

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He started an interior design business at the age of 19, the fashion brand Bitter Chocolate years later, and recently returned to interiors… Now, drawing on 25 years’ design experience, Philip Pikus has launched his first fabric collection, Contemporary Classics.

Philip has made use of cotton, linen and blends thereof, as well as bamboo, and opted for a neutral palette of taupe, grey, bone and linen. “The range has been edited so colours, tones and textures complement and coordinate with each other,” Philip says. “As with fashion, interior trends come and go… There’s always the new black.” Simply put, if homes had collections designed for them, the Contemporary Classics collection would be the Chanel equivalent: refined and timeless, perfect dressed up or down.

Philip is committed to sourcing ethically and locally wherever possible with the main ethos of his brand being “design with a conscience.”  He works closely with artisans, empowerment projects and local mills to produce exciting fabrics and accessories. And with every metre of fabric sold, a portion of the profit goes to a cause that is close to his heart.

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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.

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A collaboration between Droog and Mediagilde, this is the first platform for downloadable design, which will feature curated and open content, easy-to-use parametric design tools and a network of low- and high-tech manufacturers in The Netherlands.

The platform will be launched later this year and will include downloadable design files for furniture, home accessories, fashion, food, wearables, inventions and more.

At Salone del Mobile, Droog furthermore presented digital design tools that allow ordinary computer users to easily make functional design decisions, automatically generating blueprints for local execution in various materials. The tools also enable communication between designer and customer, streamlining and lowering the cost of a custom design process.

The Design for Download project was initiated by Droog and is made possible by Agentschap NL.

More information: www.droog.com

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