Hybrids of insects and extraterrestrials appear in the ten woven wire sculptures that comprise Walter Oltmann’s ‘Metamorphosis’ exhibition. Installed in the Norval Foundation’s light-flooded atrium with a backdrop of the sculpture garden and Chapman’s Peak in the distance, the sculptures menace and enchant in equal measure.
Johannesburg-based Oltmann acknowledges the wire craft traditions of southern Africa that conjure creatures from bent lines are one reference point, but equally at play is what he sees as the material culture of his own German family heritage of lacemaking, knotting and coiling, as well as gabion structures, metal mesh filled with rocks that are used as retaining walls to combat erosion.
Oltmann recounts his early introduction to wire was made as a student from a scrap heap. The accidental find proved fortuitous. Since the 1980s, he has produced woven wire sculptures as part of a career that often draws references from textiles and the decorative without literally using cloth.
