BY TENDAI SAUTA AWARD-WINNING visual artist Gareth Nyandoro has said the two years he spent as a resident artist in the Netherlands between 2013 and 2014 inspired him to establish an arts workshop in Ruwa, Harare.
Nyandoro was joined by other renowned global artists at the Artist Sebatical at Rijks Academy in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Speaking to NewsDay Life & Style at his Tarisa Visual Art Studio in Damofalls, Ruwa, Nyandoro said artists could do better through collaborations.
“Artists can do better through a collective union where they work and produce good artworks for both local and international markets from an industrialised place,” he said.
“So, we are just starting to build this workshop and we have made it an alternative space for industrialising and developing artistic works. I learnt all this during my stay in Amsterdam where the arts sector has a highly visible and viable value chain.”
Some of the art pieces displayed at Nyandoro’s studio include First Street Performer, Ihoho Namadzibaba Ishimairi, The Barbashop, Cement Bricks for Sale, LP Gas for Sale and Chickens for Sale.
The artifacts reflect the tensions, sorrows and agonies often caused by demolition of illegal vending structures.
“My work is always taking different directions mostly due to the wide range of materials that l experiment with. Currently, I use flexible materials such as paper and clay, which I manipulate into intrinsic detail,” he said.
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“Harare urban landscape has been the source of images, interwoven sounds and chaotic sounds between the new vendor culture, and public transport in urban spaces for my installations.”
Nyandoro is an impressionist and expressionist of urban contemporary art inspired by market places, social entrepreneurships and vendor lifestyles, characterised by fast paint brush strokes on etched paper glued and laminated on a board.
He is known for his large works on paper, which often spill out of their two-dimensional frame and into installations including paper scraps and objects found on the markets of Harare.
Nyandoro’s art reveals a high level of ingenious mindset which was nurtured at Masvingo and Harare polytechnics as he studied for a Diploma in Art and Design and later enrolled at University of Chinhoyi where he graduated with a Bachelors Degree in Creative Art and Design, majoring in industrial design.
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