July 7, 2006
By Ndaba Dlamini
JUTA Street in Braamfontein will be turned into an artistic paradise when nine large-scale tree sculptures are installed, courtesy of a public-art partnership between the Johannesburg Development Agency and The Trinity Session.
The R75 000 project is part of a broader initiative to create a visual trail in Johannesburg's cultural arc, which spans Constitution Hill, Braamfontein, and Wits University's East Campus across the Mandela Bridge through to Newtown.
"The project is a culmination of a series of conceptual design workshops conducted by Claire Regnard, a part-time visual art teacher, a group of students from the Imbali Visual Literacy Project at The Bus Factory, and the Trinity Session," says Stephen Hobbs from The Trinity Session, a contemporary art production team which runs The Premises, the Johannesburg Civic Theatre's art gallery.
Installation of the three-metre-high tree sculptures in designated concrete planters along the pavements of Juta Street will take place over the weekend. A walkabout of the street will be conducted next week, according to Regnard.
"Students came up with the original concept and developed small-scale designs of trees using recycled material like tyres and plastics. But we needed tree sculptures that would be strong to withstand the weather, so I took some elements from these designs and created human-scale expressions of tree-like metal forms."
Regnard says the tree sculptures were designed in such a way that the public could come into contact with them. "The public can play with the colourful inner part of the trees which can be set revolving with a mere touch. The sculptures are interactive in nature," she says.
The Trinity Session's involvement in public-art projects dates back to 2004 when a R10-million allocation was made to develop Johannesburg's cultural arc - a concept identified by Professor Carolyn Hamilton at Wits and developed by the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA). The project brought together the JDA, Wits University's School of Arts and The Trinity Session.
The Trinity Session had the massive task of conceptualising and implementing the project. Some R2,1-million was allocated to Constitution Hill and the balance of the funds was to be used for installations, sculptures, mosaic inlays and other features along the arc.
Some of the money served to educate and train art students from Wits and in implementing public-art projects at Constitution Hill and at Faraday Market, according to Hobbs.
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