A sculpted indigenous garden featuring more than 60 works by Dylan Lewis.


‘Shapeshifting’, an essay by Laura Twiggs

‘Where does animalkind end and humankind begin? What of the wild and the primitive within? In exploring these tantalising enigmas, Lewis searches wilderness, myth and ancient belief systems for inspiration, meaning and answers.’

'The Rising': Ian McCallum

One day your soul will call to you with a holy rage.
‘Rise up!’ it will say…

Stand up inside your own skin.
Unmask your unlived life…
feast on your animal heart.
Unfasten your fist…
let loose the medicine in your own hand.
Show me the lines…
I will show you the spoor of the ancestors.
Show me the creases…
I will show you the way to water.
Show me the folds…
I will show you the furrows for your healing.
‘Look!’ it will say…
the line of life has four paths –
one with a mirror, one with a mask,
one with a fist, one with a heart.

One day, your soul will call to you with a holy rage.

About the artist

2007

Emergence

Presented by Everard Read Cape Town at L’Ormarins, Stellenbosch, and later at the Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg, South Africa

With Emergence, an exhibition at the Franschhoek Motor Museum at the historical L’Ormarins wine estate, Lewis first unveiled his new figure work in association with Everard Read Gallery. The estate belongs to the Rupert family, prominent supporters of the arts and collectors of Lewis’s work. This was also the first time that Lewis explored multimedia, and the first time that he collaborated with an artist of a different discipline to expand on some of the ideas embedded in his work. (In this instance, he collaborated with Don Maxwell Searll, an internationally acclaimed producer and director.) The exhibition drew visitors into an intriguing journey, moving between sculptures and film installations in which the figures appeared as cinematic images that explored some of the ideas that influenced their making.

Multimedia was used throughout the exhibition, with video installations exploring many of the ideas embedded in the sculptures as a major component.

With evocative lighting, dramatic display and careful attention to detail, Emergence was more of an installation than an exhibition.

With Emergence, Lewis first showed his female figure work to the public: a radical departure from the animal sculpture exhibitions that preceded it.

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