The collection of contemporary hand-carved sculptures in a diversity of size and stone types, will be on show in an indigenous garden &amp private home setting at 44 Mowbray Road, Greenside, Johannesburg. The selection represents some of the finest stone sculptures being carved in Zimbabwe today.

The featured work, ‘Spring Song’, is by Tarzan Sithole, a talented third Generation Zimbabwean stone sculptor, whose sculptures are on display in the National Botanical Gardens in Kirstenbosch and who has exhibited at Berlin’s Botanical Gardens and Kew Gardens in London.

The theme underpinning the exhibition ‘Spring.. Sculpture.. Stone’ is the relationship between the Shona people of Zimbabwe and their environment. The Shona believe that human life is one with the animals, the plants, and nature. All living things are invested with spirits. And life’s goal is to live in harmony and balance with these sacred forces.

According to the Shona, the Bateleur eagle or ‘Chapungu’ is the bearer of spiritual messages from the ancestors, Doves or ‘Njiva’ are love messengers, the Owl or ‘Zizi’ a harbinger of bad luck, while ‘Dendera’ (the Ground Hornbill) tells people it is time to wake up and get on with the day. The rainbird ‘Whitiri’ announces that the rains will soon be on their way, so it is time to prepare for planting.

No surprise then that birds feature strongly in this exhibition. The depiction is often more conceptual than literal or representational. Naboth Chandiringa from the mountainous Nyanga region of Zimbabwe invests his bird sculptures with a heavy and powerful spiritual presence. The birds are created in terms of how he imagines them, not necessarily what he sees. Andamiyo Chihota, from Guruve, captures the flurry of birds in a variety of activities or poses, their delicately etched eyes portals to an inner world.

From the rural heart of MaShonaland, sculptor Joseph Chigangaidze delivers an altogether different selection of finely observed sculptures of deer, fish and birds. His creatures are frozen in stylized renditions of typical animal behavior. Lacknos Chingwaro, one of the finest bird sculptors in Zimbabwe today, presents a small selection of beautifully realized sculptures of herons, sunbird and stork. All occupy a special place within the Shona traditional belief system.

Complementing the selection of animal, bird and abstract works, is a significant collection of portrait sculptures by Peter Makuwise in a dazzling array of colourful Nyanga Serpentine stone. Makuwise was a finalist in the 2010 Kristin Diehl sculpture competition in Germany. Also on display are new works by Edias Muromba, an accomplished 3rd Generation sculptor who honed his skill under the guidance of Moses Masaya and is now living and sculpting in Johannesburg.

Art critics the world over acknowledge that Zimbabwe’s stone sculptors are among the finest carving by hand in stone in the world today. Zimbabwe is one of the few countries in the world that has large accessible deposits of Serpentine stone suitable for sculpting.

Among them are the hard and semi-precious lapidiary stones like Verdite (green) Lepidolite (purple) and Leopard Rock (yellow with black patches). However there is also an array of Serpentine stones ranging in colour from black, brown, orange, to yellow and green. The stone itself is between 50 million and 2.5 billion years old.

The tradition of stone carving in Zimbabwe dates back to the 12th century. Evidence of the stonemasonry skills of the great Shona empires remains today in both the granite ruins and totemic soapstone bird sculptures from Great Zimbabwe (AD 1250 - 1450).

This tradition enjoyed a renaissance in1957 when the first curator of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Frank McEwen, heard that hardwood sculptors in the mountainous Nyanga region were experimenting with stone carving. He invited them to come to a workshop in Harare where the gallery provided the necessary tools, and a sculpture movement was re-born.

These early sculptors - Joram Mariga, Bernard Matemera, Nicholas Mukomberanwa, and others were known as the 'Ist Generation' of stone sculptors. Their work has been compared to that of the great sculptors of the Western World; Auguste Rodin, Constantin Brancusi and Modigliani.

Few of Zimbabwe’s stone sculptors have had any formal art training. The Ist generation artists looked almost exclusively to their traditional culture for inspiration. And because the majority of the sculptors were Shona, the art movement was initially known as the 'Shona Sculpture movement'. Now however, there are a number of sculptors from Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia also working in stone, and they have enriched the movement as a result of their cultural input. Today it is a distinctly modern art form that takes inspiration from contemporary life as well as traditional and spiritual beliefs.

Rwavhi Fine Art, founded by former BBC journalist Carolyn Dempster, has been representing Zimbabwe’s third generation stone sculptors in South Africa since 2006.

Political and economic developments in Zimbabwe over the past decade have made it increasingly difficult for young stone sculptors who do not have an established reputation to show and sell their work internationally. These are the artists that Rwavhi Fine Art actively promotes in South Africa.

Please note the gallery is open from 10:00 to 17:30 daily. For more information on the exhibition, contact Carolyn Dempster on [email protected] or call 082 606 0278.