Victor Shabalala wins merit prize in the ABSA L'Atelier Art Competition
25 July 2009

Ardmore is excited to announce that one of our top sculptors, Victor Shabalala has been recognised as one of the countries top artists by being awarded a merit prize in the ABSA L'Atelier Art Competition.

Victor Shabalala is one of the leading sculptors at Ardmore. His visions are visited by mythical creatures that hearken back to chimera and griffons. He is steeped in Zulu traditions and perceives images through old established values. The artist is an inventive and visionary sculptor.  

He expresses himself with vigor and finds metaphors in the world of reptiles which he is particularly drawn to.  These reptiles suddenly crawl from hibernation to be integrated into a functional container. Their elongated bodies dutifully conform to the artist desires becoming part of his overall design. These misapprehended creatures are offered a new meaning whilst they maintain their imaginary beliefs.  His approach offers these cold blooded creatures a warm passage into a collector’s cabinet.

Victor is not seeking to please his audience with accepted cannons of beauty. His robust and imaginative statements acting out in space can be picked out at any exhibition. Whether his works are humorous or serious they always portray a dance of life and death. Whether one is filled with awe, discomfort or admiration his images leave their mark in our memories. Victor provides them a platform on which they can perform breathtaking aesthetic gymnastics in a constant battle of power and survival. Unlike humanity butchering and humiliating each other, the sight of a predator gobbling its prey cements our understanding of the environment, not violence.

Just as our forbearer’s mythology was populated with chimera, gargoyles, centaurs and fauns, Victor’s vocabulary incorporate monsters, eccentric creatures as well as caring birds tending to their chicks needs.  His creations are the stuff that today’s Oscar winning animations are made of. He is a contemporary man of vision whose bold “critters” would entertain and spur on children’s imaginations while their parents shudder at the source of their delight. Victor’s fascination with fish, reptiles and chameleons in particular are recurring themes but the myth also includes leopards dressed in eagle feathers, chameleons with periscope eyes and a lion’s tongue and a fish clad in snake skins, swallowing one of their own.

Where you expect an elephant trunk to become a spout on a tea pot it becomes otherwise. Trunks of the gentle giants are interlaced with a synchronized expression that offers an enhanced perceptive of our ecosystem. His works extend well beyond the visual field and are frequently metaphors for his concerns about his environment and the world at large. He is an interesting, intelligent and sensitive man who is striving to grow through his art. Victor’s humble early life at Ardmore Farm in the Champagne Valley taught him that the jungle is a setting for continued existence. Animals feed, mate and breed for the sole purpose of survival.