Nirox Foundation

During their recent residency, Siemon Allen and Kendall Buster designed and built Calyces, a large-scale site-responsive sculpture inspired by botanical form. Resting on DearLand the work offers both a mysterious distant view from the open landscape and a close-up intimate experience through accessible interior chambers. The residency also included the production of scale models for display at Natura CoLab and a richly generative dialogue with the vibrant collaborative team DearRibane who produced three-dimensional fabric forms inspired by the work. These sculptural garments were activated through movement and choreography and captured in a magical video, beyond this world.

Allen and Buster have been in creative collaboration for over three decades. Though each is engaged in robust individual artistic practices, together they have produced large-scale commissioned sculptures merging object and architecture for numerous spaces including Frick Chemistry Lab at Princeton University, Gilman Hall at Johns Hopkins University, NIKE Headquarters, Cummins Diesel, The Indianapolis Museum of Art, Solari Bridge in Scottsdale, Arizona, and the US Embassy in Rabat, Morocco.

We would like to thank all of our partners, performers and guests for making Phenomenal Women a spectacular day in celebration of women's month and all of the phenomenal women in our lives.

Thank you to the artists Deniece Marz & Nelee on vinyl with Aus’Tebza on bass and spoken word by Noxolo Desire in tribute to Maya Angelou for setting the mood.

Thank you to Whispering Angel & Lapd Wines for all of your support.

UPCOMING ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE

As part of NIROX’s ongoing partnership with pro Helvetia, we are pleased to announce Matheline Marmy’s upcoming residency, from 1 – 26 September 2026.

Marmy’s artistic practice is rooted in a material-based exploration, driven by investigations into environmental forms. The resulting works are grown from reactive materials such as water, chemicals, metallic compounds, salts, and organic elements, assembled or contained within metal structures, glass, or on porous surfaces such as textile.

Building on a research trip to Cape Town in 2022, Matheline’s residency project focuses on the unique mineral and fossil deposits in South Africa and their significance during the Earth’s development. During the residency, she is exploring networks and liminal spaces of artificial and natural compounds, engaging with the versatile qualities of materials and their entanglements and aggregations with(in) human processes, using sculpture as a tangible translation.

The resulting artworks form systems or environments where processes emerge from material-human relationships, manifesting as hybrid relational objects involving time and transformation. In dialogue with local geologists, scientists and artists at various sites and institutions, she delves into deep time to explore speculative scenarios.

Matheline Marmy currently lives and works in Geneva. She obtained a BA from ECAL and an MFA from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam.

Marmy’s residency is supported by Pro Helvetia.

Image credits (clockwise from top-left):
1. Portrait by ©HervéAnnen
2. Detail of “Excroissance”, 2026. Bronze cast, welded copper, sodium chloride, copper plate, dimensions variable
3. “Lifespan”, 2026. Copper, copper oxide, textile, 20 × 13 × 6 cm
4. “Reste”, 2026. Steel, textile, copper sulfate, iron, 60 × 60 × 80 cm

johannesburg , ,

Abathwebuli Trio has been established by some of South Africa’s most sought after musicians, embodying a potent energy, weaving a sonic tapestry of African rhythms and ancestral chants.

Sunday 6 September
NIROX Spring Jazz 2026
‘Breathe’
presented by Standard Bank SA

“Music is the poetry of the air” - Jean Paul Richter

Breathe…
air as the foundation of music

Weaving a rich tapestry of jazz
with wind instruments and the human voice

Inspired by the sounds and scents of Africa,
shaping rhythm and emotion
in the ancient heart of the Cradle of Humankind

Music, nature and companionship with gourmet foods and beverages from the Epicurean Emporium and Bernie’s Bar

Limited tickets available from link in bio.

Tickets:
Early-Bird Tickets: R550
General Admission: R650
Final Admission: R750
Children under 12: R80
Infant aged 2 and under enter the sculpture park free-of-charge

Standard Bank Private clients purchasing tickets with MasterCard Platinum, MasterCard Titanium & MasterCard World Credit Cards are entitled to a 15% discount on tickets.
Live wealthier with Standard Bank Private.

Gates open 10h00 on Sunday 6 September.
Music throughout the day, closing at sunset.

Spring Jazz 2026 is brought to you by Standard Bank Private.
702 is the official media partner of the NIROX 2026 concert series.

LINDA SIKHAKHANE

Ndabo Zulu & Umgidi Ensemble is a South African ensemble led by acclaimed trumpeter,
composer, arranger, and cultural storyteller Ndabo Zulu. Rooted in the rich musical traditions of
Southern Africa and shaped by contemporary jazz, orchestral language, and indigenous sonic
expression, the ensemble has emerged as one of the most compelling voices in the country’s
progressive music landscape.
At the heart of the ensemble’s artistic identity is a commitment to creating music that is both
cinematic and deeply ancestral — works that honour African memory, heritage, ceremony, and
collective storytelling. Through expansive arrangements, layered improvisation, choral textures,
and powerful rhythmic interplay, Ndabo Zulu & Umgidi Ensemble presents a sound that is at
once spiritual, bold, and emotionally resonant.

Ndabo Zulu & Umgidi Ensemble stands as a bold contemporary African voice — one that
honours lineage while fearlessly expanding the possibilities of modern large-ensemble music.

Sunday 6 September
NIROX Spring Jazz 2026
‘Breathe’
presented by Standard Bank SA

“Music is the poetry of the air” - Jean Paul Richter

Breathe…
air as the foundation of music

Weaving a rich tapestry of jazz
with wind instruments and the human voice

Inspired by the sounds and scents of Africa,
shaping rhythm and emotion
in the ancient heart of the Cradle of Humankind

Music, nature and companionship with gourmet foods and beverages from the Epicurean Emporium and Bernie’s Bar

Limited tickets available from link in bio.

Tickets:
Early-Bird Tickets: R550
General Admission: R650
Final Admission: R750
Children under 12: R80
Infant aged 2 and under enter the sculpture park free-of-charge

Standard Bank Private clients purchasing tickets with MasterCard Platinum, MasterCard Titanium & MasterCard World Credit Cards are entitled to a 15% discount on tickets.
Live wealthier with Standard Bank Private.

Gates open 10h00 on Sunday 6 September.
Music throughout the day, closing at sunset.

Spring Jazz 2026 is brought to you by Standard Bank Private.
702 is the official media partner of the NIROX 2026 concert series.

NDABO ZULU & UMGIDI ENSEMBLE

Ndabo Zulu & Umgidi Ensemble is a South African ensemble led by acclaimed trumpeter,
composer, arranger, and cultural storyteller Ndabo Zulu. Rooted in the rich musical traditions of
Southern Africa and shaped by contemporary jazz, orchestral language, and indigenous sonic
expression, the ensemble has emerged as one of the most compelling voices in the country’s
progressive music landscape.
At the heart of the ensemble’s artistic identity is a commitment to creating music that is both
cinematic and deeply ancestral — works that honour African memory, heritage, ceremony, and
collective storytelling. Through expansive arrangements, layered improvisation, choral textures,
and powerful rhythmic interplay, Ndabo Zulu & Umgidi Ensemble presents a sound that is at
once spiritual, bold, and emotionally resonant.

Ndabo Zulu & Umgidi Ensemble stands as a bold contemporary African voice — one that
honours lineage while fearlessly expanding the possibilities of modern large-ensemble music.

Sunday 6 September
NIROX Spring Jazz 2026
‘Breathe’
presented by Standard Bank SA

“Music is the poetry of the air” - Jean Paul Richter

Breathe…
air as the foundation of music

Weaving a rich tapestry of jazz
with wind instruments and the human voice

Inspired by the sounds and scents of Africa,
shaping rhythm and emotion
in the ancient heart of the Cradle of Humankind

Music, nature and companionship with gourmet foods and beverages from the Epicurean Emporium and Bernie’s Bar

Limited tickets available from link in bio.

Tickets:
Early-Bird Tickets: R550
General Admission: R650
Final Admission: R750
Children under 12: R80
Infant aged 2 and under enter the sculpture park free-of-charge

Standard Bank Private clients purchasing tickets with MasterCard Platinum, MasterCard Titanium & MasterCard World Credit Cards are entitled to a 15% discount on tickets.
Live wealthier with Standard Bank Private.

Gates open 10h00 on Sunday 6 September.
Music throughout the day, closing at sunset.

Spring Jazz 2026 is brought to you by Standard Bank Private.
702 is the official media partner of the NIROX 2026 concert series.

CALYCES Kendall Buster and Siemon Allen in dialogue with DearRibane

“The use of the model and the maquette as the reproduction on a reduced scale of a projected work, created for the purpose of study and experimentation, continues throughout the history of both art and architecture and forms part of the systematic endeavor to open up a space, a scene into the world of hypothesis and dreams.”
— Germano Celant

Titled Calyces Models (2026), the inventory of Kendall Buster’s paper- and foam-board sculptures on display in Natura Co-Lab offers a window into the speculative spaces of the artist’s idea generation process. They operate like sketches for an imaginary architecture as well as scale models for larger works, such as the 9-metre long, semitransparent structure that Buster and her partner, Siemon Allen, made for DearLand (located in the north-eastern corner of the park). Constructed from two-dimensional planar material that has been transformed into three-dimensional forms, the works also resonate with strategies for garment making, where rolls of fabric are cut from flat patterns and assembled to ultimately offer shape to a body when worn.

“There is an eroticism implicit in all architectural spaces,” note Buster and Allen of the larger work. “Once penetrated, they embrace, contain, shelter, or frame a human body.” Inspired by biological forms, this structure was “designed and built with accessible chambers, operating as both a presence on the landscape and a site of enclosure; a territory where animal or plant and machine might meet. Combined are suggestions of a dirigible, chrysalis, cage, belly, flowering bulb, or shelter. The transparent agricultural shade-cloth skin links exterior with interior space. Low entryways and swelling interior chambers act in direct confrontation with the body through a dual compression and opening up of space to direct movement. At once seductive and threatening, the sculpture foregrounds the contradictory promise of protection and the threat of a trap, offering an uneasy (uncertain) embrace.”

In response, DearRibane presents a series of sculptural garments conceived not as fashion, but as extensions of the sculpture itself. Constructed through volume, structure, and membrane, the garments echo the architectural language of Buster’s forms, translating spatial ideas onto the body.

Sunday, 09 August 2026, 10:30

To RSVP, email [email protected]

Join us for an artist talk with Wezile Harmans at Nirox at 16h00 on Friday 7 August 2026

“Perhaps ruin is not simply the disappearing of form, but a threshold that allows memory to move beyond physical structures.

Perhaps the unfinished offers another way of remembering – one that is less dependent on permanence and more attentive to transformation.”
— Wezile Harmans

The artist talk will take place at the Lawn Pavilion.

Tea and coffee will be served during the artist talk.

Parking available at Nirox Gate 3, R540 Kromdraai Rd, Kromdraai, Krugersdorp.

And then there was Fire... restaurant will be open before the artist talk.
Bookings are essential and can be made via 064 537 4473 or [email protected].

Limited seats are available, book early to avoid disappointment.

To RSVP, email [email protected].