/ 11 March 2011

The light side of steelwork

The Light Side Of Steelwork

Artist and sculptor David Rossouw started playing with metal for practical reasons when he built a fence around his parents’ house and had to learn how to weld.

Over the years it’s turned into a business: Rossouw’s fantastic fences and security gates — what he refers to as ‘keep the baddies out” objects — decorate homes, art galleries and businesses all over Johannesburg. He also constructs incredible jungle gyms and playground equipment out of nothing more than wood, metal and his wild imagination.

‘I like using metal in a lyrical, organic way,” Rossouw says, ‘something that’s opposite to its nature. I play a game with the metal, making it look like something fun, like a drawing, rather than strong steel.”

Several years ago Rossouw started making limited-edition and one-off light fittings. ‘I had all these cutouts in my workshop,” he says. ‘I used to look at them, stacked against the wall. I’d see the shadows that came through them when the sun caught them. I decided to put Perspex behind some of the designs to see what it would look like. Then I got a commission to make lights for a game lodge in Kenya. We made lights out of patterns, in the shape of wildebeest, buck, zebra —”

When Rossouw became ill with cancer, it prompted another review of his work. ‘When I was sick, I had to look at so many X-rays. They’d put them up on the lightbox and I’d notice all these different levels of shadow on the images. It made me think about putting steel behind [and] in front of the Perspex — to create a three-dimensional or X-ray type effect when you switch on the light.

‘The cowboy was inspired by a commission I’d done for a security gate for a small shop. There’s also a hat that has a shadow of an elephant and a snake behind it. It’s from The Little Prince, where he says: ‘My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained—”

You can contact David Rossouw at: [email protected]