In February 2023 Richard Forbes travelled to Riemvasmaak, Kalahari, to retrieve Rose Quartz from a large quarry. At the start of his residency at the Villa-Legodi Centre for Sculpture he arranged the gathered rocks on the floor of the Project Space. Each day, a rock was taken into the Workshop, transformed into a sculpture, and returned. At the core of this project is the artist’s ongoing engagement with fear. On the one hand is the desire to control or tame the world we inhabit. On the other, an acceptance of the impossibility thereof and an awareness of one’s mortality.

These dynamics play out in the violent extraction and manipulation of stone — a two way street that also leaves its mark on the artist, in the aches and pains that come with a lifetime of sculpture. At the same time, Forbes’s engagement is intended as a homage to the beauty and mystery of this finite planet; a dance with the unknown.

The extracts included on the walls of the exhibition space stemmed from an ongoing series of conversations that can be accessed via the catalogue (bottom right). The first three revolve around different topics — ‘Erosion / Corrosion,’ ‘Wild / Tame’, ‘Human / Nature’. They are intended as an entry into his sculptural practice, and will be published in print in February 2024, alongside others, during a follow-up exhibition in NIROX’s Covered Space.