Location: Courabyra Wines, Tumbarumba.
Statement: ‘Fouet’ is a hand tool without explicit purpose. Its shiny surface draws in the world through reflections. Its anatomy is perfect. Taut, without being muscular — not a ‘hair out of place’. Its blades are noiseless as they move in the wind towards a likely calamity. For them, the world, the forests, are in need of repair. To whisk or not to whisk? That is the question.
Biography: Gavin Younge works internationally as a sculptor, author, and curator. He attained an MA in Fine Arts in 1988 and is Emeritus Professor in Fine Art at the University of Cape Town. He is a past Director of the Michaelis School of Fine Art.
In 2012, he was awarded a UCT Creative Arts Award in recognition of the substantive and discursive contribution his work has made to contemporary art practice.
In 2011, he won the Handspring Puppet Company’s award for his work with Jane Taylor, and his sculptural work has been acknowledged in various publications on contemporary art including Williamson and Jamal’s book Future Present: Art in the new South Africa, Jill Bennett’s book, Empathic Vision – Affect, Trauma, and Contemporary Art and Maud de la Forterie’s essays “Deep” and “Skin”, published in French.
He has participated on two occasions at the Nirox Foundation Sculpture Park exhibitions, and on several exhibitions featuring large-scale sculpture organised by the Everard Read Galleries in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
Recent solo exhibitions include his project using vellum that was shown in Paris and at Salses as part of the Monuments et Animaux cycle of exhibitions sponsored by the French Monuments Council.
His solo exhibition, ‘Water Matters’ featuring folded metal sculptures and six ‘redrawn geographies’ was presented by Ilse Schermers Gallery during January and February 2016.
Younge exhibited at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi in 2018.
Gavin Younge. Photo Susan Hando.
Stage one of the Snowy Valleys Sculpture Trail was jointly funded by the Australian and NSW Government’s Bushfire Local Economic Recovery Fund, under the Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements.
