(gentle music)
(radio buzzing)
- I like the idea of a radio.
'Cause I grew up in an age of the radio
where I was when I was a child.
(gentle music)
It allows one to imagine
as opposed to giving them everything or almost everything.
(people chattering)
Sometimes, it's always good to just take a risk
and just draw a line.
From there, the image builds itself.
So this is like the ignition, allowing the process to guide.
I find it to be an approach that sets me on the right foot.
It allows me to drift free.
- Nicholas is an interesting person, you know?
So he doesn't give you the instruction
like you have to do the work and finish.
He engages with you also while you're working, you know?
So it's better to work, work, then do other things,
then come back to work.
Then, when he's around, then he tells you,
hey, you can go this way, you know?
- I tell the people who are assisting me to do the work
to always just have fun with it.
Don't be too serious about it,
'cause when you try to be too serious, you won't do it.
It's a waste of your time.
(soft ambient music)
I make these lines, the lines are easy to make,
but then how you get to force those lines
to assume some new role,
you do it almost child-like.
It brings something to the fold.
You get to learn something from it.
Occasionally I make a sketch, especially for sculptures,
I make a sketch, so that's what I have to do.
But most of the time, I always go into the idea
of working with a word, with a theme,
'cause I believe a word, especially nouns and even verbs,
they relate to objects and what objects do.
This is a heel of a shoe last.
For this painting, it's gonna be named Fak'unyawo,
as in insert your foot,
like testing the water sort of thing,
or stepping up from that.
That's Xhosa.
It's faka, which means insert, plus foot.
So it's faka unyawo,
but should make it one word, Fak'unyawo.
(bright gentle music)
It's important to go astray.
'Cause if you are in a foreign city and you get lost,
then you'll discover some alleyways and some avenues
that you will not necessarily discover
had you been placed on the right path.
The silent wind orchestra.
Initially, they musical instruments.
I thought to have them in one of the canvases.
And that idea grew that, actually,
they could stand by themselves.
They are wind instruments.
If we have these elongated brass and copper tubes
that are connected to the trumpets, the bugles,
they will still be music instruments.
And we had to somehow shift
that notion of music instruments.
And also perhaps, would be used as a metaphor.
If you think about blowing your own horn,
you're too ambitious.
(dreamy music)
Listen to what's happening around you.
You become a little antenna
that is allowing everything to flow.
Some things pass and you grab the ones that are important.
(singing in foreign language)
Keeping all your doors open, that's what's important.
(dog barking)
(insects chirring)