Name: Celéste Erasmus
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Outdoor Mosaic Installations

The mosaic artworks at Spier were created by students and graduates of the three-year Spier Artisan Apprenticeship Programme, which ran from 2008 to 2020.

CREATIVE COLLABORATIONS

Offering three years of employment-based training in professional Mosaic and Ceramic as an art medium, the programme provided emerging artisans (the majority of which are from previously disadvantaged backgrounds) with quality training – empowering them with the necessary artistic and business skills to run their own businesses successfully after graduation.

Although the programme has concluded, the Spier Arts Trust continues to build on its legacy by finding opportunities for its 68 graduates to specialise in collaborative and experimental work with fine artists, designers and architects in the conceptualising, manufacture and installation of large-scale contemporary artworks in these exciting mediums. The alumni are still actively engaged in producing mosaic, either through opportunities that arise through Spier Arts Trust or their own marketing efforts.

The Dying Slave

Between the Spier Hotel and the Werf, you’ll encounter the nine soaring columns that together make up The Dying Slave. The design for this mosaic was done digitally by Marco Cianfanelli, using a photographic source, based on Michelangelo’s image of a male slave in the ecstatic throes of dying. Mosaic panels were placed on both sides of the columns, with one side of the column featuring a “positive” image and the other a ‘negative’ (inversion) of the same image. This 42.6 square metre mosaic artwork consists of almost 225,000 pieces of tesserae (mosaic pieces). Ten mosaic artists worked for five months to complete it.

Uthomi

In 2019, a mosaic sculptural fountain designed by Mozambican artist Lizette Chirrime was installed near Vadas Smokehouse & Bakery. Celebrating and showcasing Chirrime’s talent for combining colour and abstract form, it offers a vibrant playground for the imagination. The artwork forms the fountain floor, and its mosaic surface is flush with the surrounding surface, encouraging visitors to engage with the installation and water.

Spier History Trails

In 2020, the Mosaic Kraal also became home to Spier History Trails. Overlaid on the path spanning the precinct’s length, the work pays tribute to the multitude of unacknowledged people that have lived and worked here over the past millennia. Their names might not have been recorded but the flow of their daily lives, and the animals they tended, have left their indelible tracks throughout the memory of the farm. The design, by an anonymous artist, was painstakingly translated into mosaic using natural stone and Venetian smalti (opaque glass paste).

The Spier Mosaic Kraal

Situated between the Wine Collection Point and the Tasting Room, the Spier Mosaic Kraal features the works of 16 contemporary South African artists. It is South Africa’s first permanent outdoor exhibition of mosaic. 20 images from the Creative Block project were interpreted as mosaic artworks by the Spier Artisan Apprenticeship Programme’s apprentices. The images were chosen for their extraordinary visual impact, their ability to be successfully interpreted using the medium of mosaic, and the challenging characteristics that would enable the apprentices working on them to gain the skills needed to become expert mosaicists. Together the artworks illustrate the variety and vibrancy of mosaic as a medium – a contemporary African reinvention of this ancient art form.