Industry of Victoria Yards
INTERESTING MIX: FROM INCREDIBLE-DESIGNS FURNITURE TO TORN-PAPER COLLAGES
Each week Marie-Lais looks out for the unusual, the unique, the downright quirky or just something or someone we might have had no idea about, even though we live here. We like to travel our own cities and their surrounds, curious to feel them out. This week she notices there is no yardstick.
Awork in progress is unpredictable, irrepressible, even surprising its creator, Brian Green of 44 Stanley in this case. It goes for writers, too.
I mention to Heather that I am more curious about the urban farming at the Victoria Yards than the studios and things.
When we’re there I also mention that to Chann (pronounced Shahn) de Villiera. She has a distinctly funny gleam in her eye. The project gardener is not there anyway today.
The geometric gardens are everywhere, not in any one spot, fruiting and flowing from planters, waving pick-me fronds between paths, even dotted down a wall outside the Daville Baillie gallery.
Victoria Yards is enormous, 300 000 square meters of previously industrial area, “mostly chop shops”, Chann says. There’s more work to progress, “across the river”, where David Krynauw has his incredible-designs furniture concern.
The Jukskei moseys along the bottom of a deep culvert, its opaque water a soapy greeny-blue.
Down east, emerging from sawdust and hammer blaming, are throne-like chairs, impressively tall. Some are already gilded, some sporting fake leopard skin, some satiny upholstery. These are hot sellers for weddings and I also recognise them from a few charismatic churches.
This enterprise existed before the Victoria Yards project started up, part of Green’s inclusive and upskilling policy that retains the spirit of the place.
Chairs are something here. The usually trad Daville Baillie concentrating, at their new locale, on South Africa’s younger artists, welcomes them with two of their own stunners and a retro sweetie machine.
Studios and things include that of friend Happy Dhlame, sadly not here today, also James Delaney, Ayanda Mabulu, the smelt glassblowers, photographer Roger Ballen, Blessing Ngubane.
I’m thrilled at finding Dario Manjate among his newer works, these torn-paper collages, like one of miners almost literally embodying the aspirant lifestyles for which they are grubbing underground.
Interestingly, near his piles of old magazines for tearing, I see one of his marvellous oils from 2013 of Joburg’s paper collectors.
Now we’re in an astonishing pub and pizza place, within the Impi Brewery, with the two, lively economists-turned-brewers Tsietsi and Nico.
Their chairs have the popular industrial look but the stunning bar is made of bright plastic crates.
Okay, Chann’s responsible for my now unexpecting the expected at the Victoria Yards. They’re moving way beyond compare.
Victoria Yards entrance – 16 Viljoen St, Lorentzville