The experiential and narrative aspects of the arts can fundamentally shift how we act on the climate change crisis by transforming meaning, not just delivering facts | When the water crisis threatens the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa, one of Earth’s earliest homes of modern humans, facts alone wont shift our behaviour. Across the world, we already know the science, yet we fail to act. South African artist Johan Thom shows how the arts can change what water, soil, and survival actually mean to us. Drawing on personal history, Darwin’s ideas, and years of artistic experimentation, he reveals how beauty, choice, and imagination shape the core decisions that determine our collective future. While the sciences may diagnose the problem, the arts help us feel and experience our changing world in different ways, reminding us that meaning, not data, drives human action | South African artist Johan Thom works across performance, video, and installation to probe the human condition in a changing world. As curator of the forthcoming Soil & Water exhibition at NIROX, he brings artists together to engage with ecology, resilience, and our shared climate future. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
Posts Tagged ‘Nirox Foundation’
Beauty and survival in a changing climate | Johan Thom | TEDxJohannesburg
Posted in News, tagged Art, art and beauty, art and evolution, beauty, Climate Change, Contemporary Art, Darwin, Johan Thom, Nirox Foundation, tedx, tedxjohannesburg, water crisis on December 11, 2025|
‘Grasp’ new and recent works by Johan Thom at the Nirox Foundation, 8 September- mid November 2024 (tbc)
Posted in News, tagged African art, Art, Casa Wabi Foundation, ceramics, Contemporary Art, Johan Thom, Nirox Foundation, Performance art, Sculpture, South African art on August 21, 2024|
NIROX is pleased to present new and recent works by South African artist Johan Thom, exploring the material relationship between the tactile, time, and (negative) space.
The exhibition is structured in two parts, split across two venues. Held in NIROX’s residency workshop, part one includes a recent installation — Time after Time (2023) — in which an automated brick and bronze skull constantly rotate, narrowly missing each other. Across the road, at the Kromdraai Impact Hub, Thom presents three new works: Will you still be mine? (The weight of body in ice), a large photograph documenting his performance at Casa Wabi, Mexico, earlier this year; Dwell (the weight of my body as a brick), produced in collaboration with Modern Art Projects South Africa (MAPSA); and LH+RH+LHRH (Grasp), a major installation of over a thousand individual clay forms.
Dwell is a large replica of a red building brick, such is commonly used for the construction of homes, shelters, and buildings in South Africa. Made to the weight of the artist, it is a deceptively complex minimalist gesture in which the body is shown to be a contested, uneasy home — at once a space of ‘dwelling’ (of knowing and being) whilst also forming part of the skewed spatio-political and economic organisation of the contemporary South African landscape.
In turn, LH+RH+LHRH (Grasp) (2024) is a site-specific installation that gives three- dimensional form to the negative space generated by ‘grasping’ a lump of clay. The result is an overwhelming number of near alien, bone-like fragments, arranged in three minimalist, 10 x 3m rectangular grids.
In keeping with the context of the Cradle of Humankind, this arrangement is reminiscent of the anthropological/archeological sites nearby. Here, the act of grasping becomes a metaphor for that which remains unknown or undiscovered, suggesting that the tactile and material remain largely dormant, fecund repositories for rethinking our partial knowledge of the world.
RSVP: sven(at)niroxarts.com
The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication, with essays by Dr Sikho Siyotula (Research Associate, UP), Dr. Wayne Binitie (Associate Lecturer, Camberwell College of Art, London) and Sven Christian (Curator, NIROX), published by the Villa- Legodi Center for Sculpture in partnership with UJ Press. Also included in the exhibition is “Grasp (Fragment),” an educational kit developed for the tactile exploration and teaching of sculpture, in collaboration with Prof. Jenni Louwrens (Associate Professor in Visual Studies, School of the Arts, UP), The student Gallery at the Javett UP, the Claire & Edoardo Villa Will Trust and the Villa-Legodi Center for Sculpture. The artworks on exhibition have been generously supported by a number of organisations: NIROX Foundation; Villa-Legodi Center for Sculpture; Modern Art Projects South Africa; Casa Wabi, Mexico; The National Research Foundation of South Africa; The School of the Arts, University of Pretoria; Kalashnikovv Gallery
Figure details: Johan Thom, Will you still be mine (Del Mar#1), photographic production still form a performance in Casa Wabi, Mexico, 2024 (Sizes: 210 x 110cm).
‘(Don’t) look back’ at Gallery Momo Cape Town in collaboration with the Nirox Foundation
Posted in News, tagged Art, Gallery Momo, Gordon Froud, Joachim Schonfeldt, Joni Brenner, Kim Lieberman, Ledelle Moe, Marco Cianfenelli, Marcus Neustetter, Nirox Foundation, Richard John Forbes, Sculpture, Sophia van Wyk, Stephan Erasmus, Willem Boshoff on March 17, 2017|
Opening: Thursday, 23 March from 18:00 to 20:00
Featuring Lament, a performance by Lizette Chirrime in collaboration with Ledelle Moe, at 19:00
ARTIST FEATURED
Willem Boshoff | Joni Brenner | Marco Cianfenelli | Guy du Toit | Stephan Erasmus | Richard John Forbes | Gordon Froud | Kim Lieberman | Ledelle Moe | Marcus Neustetter | Lwandiso Njara | Brett Rubin | Joachim Schonfeldt | Johan Thom | Sophia van Wyk
Gallery MOMO Cape Town is proud to present (DON’T) LOOK BACK – a group sculpture exhibition, a collaboration between the NIROX Foundation and Gallery MOMO. The exhibition continues NIROX’s commitment to fostering the arts, particularly the development of three-dimensional work, and the artists across the country who have dedicated themselves to their discipline. (DON’T) LOOK BACK explores the practice of constructing form through the medium of sculpture. Featuring work by seventeen sculptors affiliated to NIROX, the exhibition offers a sampling of recent South African sculpture.
johanthom.com 