‘Botanical Studies in Bronze and Silver II’

In this, Nic’s second solo exhibition at Everard Read London, and sixth solo to date, he once again draws attention to the diversity of the Cape Floral Kingdom, the ecological ‘jewel’ of South Africa. In this body of work, beautiful and ephemeral flowering plants such as ericas, are shown alongside a spiny strelitzia and fleshy-leaved Veltheimia bracteata, while the taller the plants of this show, the 1,6 meter Agapanthus and Euryops pectinatus (daisy family) and the towering, almost 2 meter Watsonia tubularis, confront the viewer almost at eye level.

The only non-Fynbos sculpture in this body of work is the extraordinary Clivia miniata, which is endemic to further north in South Africa, from the Eastern Cape to Kwazulu-Natal and up to Mpumalanga. This plant, with its trumpet-shaped flowers, speaks of the world’s ‘love affair’ with South African clivias, which began in the 1800s when specimens where sent back to England from Kwazulu-Natal, an interest which still persists today.