Estate Living Magazine Smart Moves - Issue 38 February 2019 | Page 39

C O M M U N I T Y
and museum models, meaning that he’s only relatively recently
started exhibiting his work on the gallery circuit.
His pieces range from a relatively small, hand-cranked, steel rower
paddling away on his quirky little boat atop a mechanical tower of
no known provenance (all jerky movement and hypnotic style), to
the country’s largest kinetic sculpture, a 12-metre-high wood-and-
metal rolling ball machine (18 balls, more than a kilometre of track,
two motors driving two chains each 23 metres in length) that was
built for Wesbank’s head office in Sandton, and which now stands
‘out in the desert, waiting to come alive again when we roll flaming
balls through it during next year’s AfrikaBurn.’
His works may be amusing, but that’s the whole point: ‘I’ve always
liked the idea of engaging the viewer, and holding them for a certain
amount of time – because time is big for me.
‘It’s not sufficient that someone glances at my stuff: they have to stop
and think, “What’s going on here?” or take time to activate one of
the things that make it move – and then I’m doing my job.’
In his latest creations – arrangements of pendulums that he calls,
‘metanomes’ (metanome with an A, as in meta = beyond, and nome
= measurement) – he, like Rickey, has striven for randomness of
movement.
L I V I N G
It taught him that the
appeal of kinetic art is
‘the very fact that it
moves’.
His kinetic sculptures
include
machines
that pump water from
nowhere to nowhere (but
many of those have been
taken down in response to the
prolonged drought in the Cape) and
some that make music. ‘I’m not interested in making a racket,’ he
says. ‘I far prefer to mesmerise people with sound.’ He’s also done a
remarkable series of turnstiles for a playground in the Mitchells Plain
Public Transport Interchange. Each of these structures is crowned by
a number of sculptures of flying vehicles that were inspired by local
children, and that turn whenever the kids play on the roundabouts.
‘The children were asked to draw “Transport in the Year 2020”, and
then the designs were copied from their drawings as closely as
possible.
‘I particularly like the “Granny with parachute on a jet-propelled
skateboard”.’
For Mark, the viewer’s imagination enhances the attraction of a
piece. ‘Everyone always wants to figure out how it works,’ he said.
‘Kids are just naturally drawn to it, and older people really like to
explain it – even if their explanations are way out.’
‘It’s about creating a relationship between the viewer and the
piece,’ he said. ‘Because if I make a beautiful fire grate, it’s not art,
it’s just a beautiful fire grate: the only way a piece can become art is
to have no requirement other than that it speaks to someone’s sense
of themselves.’ He said, too, that moving art gets attention from unexpected
audiences. ‘We once did a street show in Oudtshoorn involving a
tower with cogs, and the farmers – who don’t usually have much
time for art – were commenting on it and trying to work it all out.
‘We played all the major festivals in South Africa, did a
range of projects in Cape Town, and toured in Holland in
2001, taking our audiences on adventurous journeys of the
imagination,’ he said.
Landscape art
So what should you look for if you’re planning to commission a
sculpture for your garden or your estate – to enhance your entrance,
say, or to create a focal point in a public space? The answer, it seems,
is as simple as it’s infinitely complicated:
If you want to move anyone who uses your space, you should
probably install a sculpture that moves.
servest.co.za
Cape Town-based Mark O’Donovan (markodonovan.
co.za) studied engineering at university, but he wasn’t
made for the profession: instead, he took to fine art
(which he studied by correspondence), and became
involved in performance art – first with a Dutch group,
and then with his own group: the Odd Enjineers, which
he founded with working partner, Geert Jonkers.
‘They would hang around for the show so that they could see it in
action.’
I
Mark O’Donovan
‘We use a metronome to give us a steady beat when we’re playing
music, so the word “metanome” is a play on that – and the time it
takes for people to figure out that they can’t figure out what’s going
to happen next [with the sculpture] is one of the things I’m trying for.