The sixth highly anticipated edition of the celebrated annual Spier Light Art will present an evocative world of light, sound and video art at the historic Stellenbosch Wine Farm.

Illuminate your evenings from 1 March to 1 April 2024 with 21 different light and video artworks installed across the Stellenbosch Wine Farm.

Art refects what is happening in the world around us, and this is certainly true of the work featured at Spier Light Art 2024. This year’s artists have grappled with some big themes, such as environmental disasters and climate change, how technology dominates our lives, the effects of racism and colonialism, gender identities, and how humans make sense of life.

These lights and colours will awaken your senses. You might happen upon a mesmerising, colourful network of fungi in Stevie Thompson’s Mycelium, or be faced with the blurry lines between relaxation and inattention in Alan Alborough’s sculptural ‘ZZZZ’.

You might encounter Abri de Swardt’s Flood Light or Naadira Patel and Sarah de Villiers’  Assembling Lines and wonder how we can save our planet from humanity’s excess and short-sightedness.

Spier invests a lot of time and energy into making art accessible to as many people as possible, which is why this annual light art experience is free to enter – the aim is to celebrate artists and their creations and to offer every visitor a unique interaction with inspiring artworks. 

“These works combine wonder, participation and thought. This exhibition of Light Art is a space for celebration, offering moments of escape and fantasy, and moments when we may touch sides with the world outside, lest indeed, we fall completely asleep,” says curators Vaughn Sadie and Jay Pather.

Arrive just before the sun goes down to enjoy an outdoor feast of food and wine under the summer sky. As the stars come out, the lights turn on.

For more information, visit spier.co.za. This project is supported by the Swiss Arts Council, Pro Helvetia Johannesburg and Fedex.

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An exhibition titled Love Thy Monsters showcased site-specific furniture to raise awareness about the illegal dumping of construction waste in Dighomi Meadows, one of the last remaining riparian forests in the Tbilisi region of Georgia.

The Love Thy Monsters exhibition, held in October this year in association with the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial, was intended to kickstart a large-scale renovation project. The project is aimed at transforming a section of a derelict power station into an active community space for the local internet radio station, ‘Mutant Radio’.

Love Thy Monsters was conceptualised as part of RRRUBBLE, a collaborative research project spearheaded by The MAAK and Space Saloon. The project aims to redefine the role of resources and agency in architectural production. The purpose of the exhibition was to draw attention to the harmful effects of waste in society and to showcase the advantages that adopting circular thinking can bring to the global design and construction industries. The MAAK and Space Saloon teamed up to lead a group of local creatives and artisans in a week-long process of play and prototyping, using foraged materials from Dighomi Meadows.

The project team, guided by the ‘material intuition’ of what they found on-site, developed a unique range of furniture. Each custom-made piece was designed to tell a part of the story about the long-term environmental damage happening in Dighomi Meadows.

The project aimed to question the role and agency of materials in contemporary creative practices. The exhibition showcased lighting fixtures, shelving units, and tables of various sizes, along with audio recordings, block prints, and physical samples from the site highlighting their material and geopolitical roots.

Guided by the ‘material intuition’ of what was found on-site, the project team developed a bespoke range of furniture informed by hyper-contextual material gestures. Each custom-made piece told its part of the story on the long-term environmental damage happening in Dighomi Meadows and questioned the role and agency of materials in contemporary creative practices. Lighting fixtures, shelving units and tables of various sizes were exhibited alongside audio recordings, block prints and physical samples from the site, bringing focus to their material and geopolitical roots.

Looking for more design inspiration? Sign up to our weekly newsletter, here.

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Art collective teamLab will be bringing an interactive digital installation titled Resonating Microcosms of Life – Solidified Light Color to Maison&Objet Spring 2022.

Those lucky enough to attend Maison&Objet in Paris next year will be able lose themselves in an immersive colour experience curtesy, of teamLab’s Resonating Microcosms of Life – Solidified Light Color installation. The interactive exhibit features an infinitely-expanding space filled with glowing ovoids that shine and resonate when pushed by people. The ovoids emit sound tones and change into teamLab’s 61 newly-defined ‘Solidified Light Colors’ as they interact with the visitors, immersing people into the artwork.

Under the sun, the ovoids reflect the world around them. When pushed down by a person or blown by the wind, the ovoid falls back and then rises, releasing a resonating tone. The ovoids around it also respond one after another, continuing to resonate with the same tone.

Once the sun sets, or in the dark, the ovoids shine all by themselves. When an ovoid is pushed by a person or blown by the wind, it shines brightly and emits a sound tone, as it rights itself. The ovoids around it also respond one after another, emitting the same light colour and sound tone that continues to resonate out.

According to teamLab, the space of the work is interactively transformed under the influence of the wind, rain, and the behaviour of the people in the space, making the environment and the people a part of the work. When the wind is quiet and people are still, the ovoids begin to flicker slowly.

Based on the five concepts behind this ever-changing artwork: Relationship with People; Relationship with Natural Phenomena; Physicality; Continuity; and New Colors, teamLab aims to explore the relationship between the self and the world and new perceptions through art.

teamLab has been the subject of numerous exhibitions at venues worldwide, including New York, London, Paris, Singapore, Silicon Valley, Beijing, and Melbourne among others. The permanent museums teamLab Borderless opened in Tokyo in June 2018, and teamLab Borderless Shanghai in Huangpu District, Shanghai in November 2019. teamLab Planets, a museum where you walk through water and a garden where you become one with the flowersin Toyosu, Tokyo is on view until the end of 2022.

The Resonating Microcosms of Life – Solidified Light Color exhibit will run at Maison&Objet Spring 2022.

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Nelson Makamo’s latest artwork might just be his most unique piece to date. “My Life in Motion” is a one-off customised Porsche 911 featuring the artist’s signature accents.

World-renowned visual artist Nelson Makamo’s latest art installation – “My Life in Motion” – is literally a moving canvas. The customised Porsche 911 is an eye-catching, Jet Black Metallic Porsche 911 Carrera Coupé, featuring the artist’s signature accents, which include a hand-painted rear bumper panel, as well as side mirror covers, seatbacks and interior trim panels.

Nelson painstakingly created the individual elements for his latest art installation by hand-painting selected parts of the car at his studio in the heart of Johannesburg. These parts were taken back to Porsche Centre Johannesburg to be lacquer coated and assembled, ready for the private unveiling.

This project encouraged Nelson to reflect on his personal journey, recalling the various individuals that had an impact on his life. Doing so, he was able to portray his belief in community through the depictions painted on the vehicle. This community has no race, age, gender or geographical origin, representing an international collective of individuals. “What better way to summarise my journey through life than by putting it in a form of collectives. We are at a point in time in the world where we are slowly moving into one culture because we care about each other as people more than anything. I want you to see yourself on the car” Nelson says looking at the rear bumper panel featuring a large crowd of people. “This 911 is meant to inspire anyone to believe that they can succeed through their passion”.

The left side door panel insert subtly bears the inscription “Mma”, purposely only visible when the door of the 911 is open. These three letters mean “Mother” in Nelson’s home language of Sepedi and are a dedication to his mother, the first artwork on which he has ever mentioned her. With this subtle, yet deeply meaningful acknowledgement, Nelson pays tribute to his Mother who supported him throughout his life, inspiring him to believe that success through art is possible, despite many challenges.

From building wire toy cars as a child, to owning a customised Porsche 911, Nelson is humbled by his success. “I always knew I was going to own a Porsche, I just never knew that my relationship with the brand would start this way – and it’s only the beginning.” The project took weeks to complete, and Nelson declared that he enjoyed every moment. There was no brief – it was entirely Nelson’s story to tell; the story of a young man who chose to believe that he can succeed.

Toby Venter, CEO of Porsche South Africa, says the project has provided great motivation: “Working with Nelson has been inspirational and this commission is on a level we’ve never seen before. This is a truly bespoke art installation worthy of any gallery. In addition, it illustrates the lengths Porsche South Africa will go to; the creativity and flexibility of our team to accommodate a request as personal as this. Porsche customers already have a virtually endless array of options available through Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur to make their car completely individual, but then, when a unique customer such as Nelson chooses to do something extraordinary, we are delighted to accommodate his wishes.”

Looking for more on local art? Take a look at the work of Georgina Gratrix and Chris Soal’s collaboration with Lady Dior.

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The inhospitable Richtersveld coast is home to an extraordinary development that seamlessly melds this arid World Heritage Site with architecture, installation art and the rural community.

Port Nolloth is an odd kind of place. In the solid light of day, some of its working-class homes look distinctly forlorn. But some mornings, as the malmokkie – a thick bank of mist that often settles over the town for the entire day – pushes inland from the Atlantic Ocean, the fishermen and diamond divers’ stories are given a twist, wooden shacks become palaces and, miraculously, mosaic letters spell out residents’ names on walls.

It is precisely this cool haziness, even at the height of summer, that drew Jimmy and Annelize du Toit, an attorney and a mathematical statistician, here in 1991. In 2000, they initiated the ambitious KaiKai residential development in partnership with the Richtersveld municipality. The Nama word for “to cultivate, to elevate with praise or to nurture with pride”, KaiKai is no ordinary residential development. A strong emphasis is placed on uplifting the surrounding community by not only using local labour and materials, but also through the Gaudi-inspired Wall of Expression. 

The “border-shifting” boundary wall adorned with tile and quartz mosaics now almost surrounds the development without cutting it off from the rest of the community. Residents have depicted their dreams and aspects of their daily lives on it. Still a work in progress, the wall now bears 7 500 names of Port Nolloth’s 12 000 residents.

“Jimmy’s got a thing for art,” says Annelize. This is evidenced by the mosaics that continue inside the Du Toits’ own beach house, designed by architect Chris Wilkinson and built by Piet Malgas. 

It was Jimmy who designed the kelp-forest pattern in the guest bathroom and that of the master bedroom’s en-suite bathroom. He also created the expanse of red mosaics in the kitchen – an abstract of the dorsal fins of edible fish found in local waters. 

The living room is home to two more of Jimmy’s creations: A bookcase made of thick wooden beams and paper-thin steel, and wall panels he describes as “three-dimensional interpretations of  Piet Mondrian paintings”. 

“Port Nolloth isn’t Plett or Umhlanga. We like to turn things upside down – including common ideas of what a beach house should look like,” explains Annelize.   

For more information, visit kaikai.co.za

Looking for more architectural inspiration? Take a look at this Yzerfontein beach house.

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