The Sculpture Garden
at One Off Gallery
at One Off Gallery
The One Off Sculpture Garden at 16 Rosslyn Lone Tree
Opening Hours: Tuesday through Saturday – 10am to 5pm
Sundays - 12 noon to 5pm
No picnics and no pets please!
The One Off Sculpture Garden at Rosslyn Lone Tree is a work in progress which will doubtless remain so always. It is decidedly unfinished and work on its basic construction is expected to continue. We beg your indulgence.
Begun in April 2019, the garden was born of a desire to supply a ‘salad bowl’ for our visiting Colobus Monkey troop. The subsequent decision to plant 133 indigenous trees and shrubs to encourage birds, bees and butterflies necessitated the felling of 60 Eucalyptus trees. Only a few remnant Eucalyptus trees remain. The final piece in the puzzle came in the form of a financial windfall from environmental enthusiast and art collector,
Vivien Mather. And the project to plant a garden to show sculpture took flight.
Next the team suggested the idea of an inaugural exhibition to Marc Van Rampelberg. Aside from being a loyal friend and supporter of One Off, Marc has a history of collecting art in Kenya dating back to the 80s. At the time he was the in-house curator and long-term gallery partner of Ruth Schaffner, the owner of Gallery Watatu which was the leading gallery in its day. This gave him access to extensive collectables and he was able to acquire some of the most significant works produced in Kenya. Of particular importance are his works sculpted by Samuel Wanjau Sr., which we saw as being essential for any sculptural review. It goes without saying that these are unobtainable now, the artist being deceased. It became evident that any serious show of sculpture from the region would require a number of loaned works from Marc’s collection. Marc also brought his superb taste, design skills, attention to detail and spatial awareness to the project. He was a shoe-in for the task of curator for our first ever sculptural review in the new garden. Thom Ogonga was asked to contextualize the historical event.
In conversation with Marc and Thom we deduced that an exhibition, purely of sculpture on this scale, has never been embarked upon in the region. Marc’s curatorial ethos was to try to be as inclusive as possible and to push the ‘sculptural envelope’ as wide as possible. To this end, the exhibition encompassed traditional forms in wood, stone and metal but it also included ‘the human figure as object’ in the form of a mime artist. It included glass, paper and mosaic. It looked at some two-dimensional works as three-dimensional sculptures. It attempted to include the most significant sculptors working in Kenya today and it tried to reach back to their influences and origins. It also displayed works by some younger artists or less well-known players.
The One Off Sculpture Garden in it's current form will always grow and change. We hope you will drop by to enjoy it and will return often to absorb the atmosphere and the sculptures in the ever-altering garden.
