ROBBIE RORICH
From an early age Robert Rorich, or Robbie as his family and friends know him, showed an interest in the people, landscapes, and opportunities around him. It was during his schooling years in White River, Mpumalanga that these interests blossomed into passions. Assembling Lego creations developed into modelling life forms out of clay whilst running around the garden with friends developed into an admirable trail running ability.
Robbie talks fondly of his time at school where early inspiration came in the form of the people around him and nature. “I was fortunate enough to spend a lot of time in the bush”, he says. During his later years of high school, Robbie “fell in love with making sculptures”.
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A curiosity for the physical world and a passion for mathematics lead Robbie to Cape Town to study Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering at UCT. After graduating, with a continued curiosity in the world and a passion for adventure Robbie, his sister, and a handful of friends spent the year travelling down the length of Africa on their bicycles.
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In his body of sculpture work, Robbie transformed his inspirations into tangible recreations of life that transform the spaces they fill. “I am in love with movement, human and other animal bodies, and the positive energy that comes from the natural world around us. I have a deep love and ever-increasing appreciation for all that is alive. I have a pull to recreate these forms in sculpture and on paper. There is no way of making a living entity more alive than it already is but I hope that, through my sculptures, animals and people are able to come alive in the space in which they are placed. The animals guide my hands, I feel surges of intense energy that last for days while making sculptures. Through being present and allowing myself to open up to the subject of what I am sculpting I feel that I am guided from start to end by a spiritual connection to my subject matter - be it a Crocodile or a Goliath Heron. I am quite sure that it's not just me who makes the sculptures.”
Pangolins have been on the planet for 80 million years. They survived a mass extinction, 66 million years ago, when an asteroid collided with Earth, wiping out 75% of earth’s animals, including non-bird dinosaurs. Now, a pangolin is poached every five minutes, making them the most poached mammal on earth, threatened with extinction at the hands of man, and the title of 'the most poached mammal on the planet'.
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AVAILABLE WORK
Pangolin
Bronze Sculpture
Limited Edition
74 x 26 x 18 cm
R130 000
Pangolin Boy
I see you, friend Just a step apart, but I feel you,
Like red earth beneath my feet. Like the orange sun across my body. Alive I hear you, friend
Our language is different
But I understand you, like the hymns of the river; Like the war-cries of thunder.
Alive I recognise you, friend
Though we’ve never met I know you
Like I know the stars and moon
Not by name.
And here, now, When I look at you, I see myself, too.
Different and the same
All at once Collided sequels; Alive - Equals
Words of
Natalie de Chassart
Pangolin
Aluminium Sculpture
Limited Edition
​47 x 26 x 22 cm
R25 000
Pangolin Walk
Everything that it is to be
Is to exist here
In open plains
Where the dust dawns and dusk eves
Pass gently
Without fear or war
Greed and hunger do not approach us
With their snares and rifles
Pathways are carved only by
Those that bring life,
And as crickets sound in
Drumming song
All of us rest in knowing we belong
We rest
We exist
We move free
This is what it is.
To be.
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Words of
Natalie de Chassart
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Crocodile & Girls
Bronze Sculpture
Limited Edition
80 x 30 x 39 cm
R89 500
Walking along, in the direction that we are going, we can’t forget the one that we walk on. Whether it’s the earth or the back of a crocodile, we remember the blessing that it is to have something solid beneath our feet. And the blessing that it is to do it together.
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When we were children we heard a story of a crocodile creating a bridge with its broad back for school children to cross a flooded river to get to class. In its seeming impossibility this image stayed in my mind for years. Until finally, through sculpture, I could bring it to life in this way. It’s the story of crossing the boundary of what we thought was possible, with the help of the very thing that we may fear most.