Cleave: An Alphabet of Form

In February 2023 Richard Forbes travelled to Riemvasmaak, Kalahari, to retrieve Rose Quartz from a large quarry. At the start of his residency he arranged the gathered rocks on the floor of the Project Space. Each day, a rock is 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 catalogue, which you can download by clicking the button below, is born of a series of ongoing conversations with the artist. 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.