Cape artist transforms seaweed into mythical sculptures

Sculptor Janko de Beer specialises in seeing fantastical possibilities in smelly dead things writes Tiara Walters

Janko de Beer, a self-taught sculptor, who lives in Mowbray, Cape Town, has always been something of an alchemist, transforming found organic materials into mythical creatures.

When he was a boy, he hunted down roadkill, dismembering the animal and reconstituting it into a beast of his own liking. "I'd scrape the carcass off the road and cut out the body parts, such as little teeth, to use in a brand-new fantasy animal."

Not quite the sort of pastime one would associate with an advocate - but then the heavily tattooed De Beer is not your average member of the Cape Bar. A Unisa law graduate with Springbok colours in gymnastics, he matriculated at Pretoria's Pro Arte in 1997, a school that grooms students for a career in the arts. But De Beer majored in French cuisine. "You could study fine art, theatre, dance ... or French cuisine," he shrugs.

Now the advocate-by-day, sculptor-by-dawn (the father of two habitually rises at 4.30am), has turned his attention to desiccated kelp.

The inspiration behind De Beer's seaweed sculptures

"I went for a walk on the beach near Mouille Point a year ago, and the dynamic lines of sprawling heaps of washed-up bull kelp captured my imagination. Each stem, or stipe, struck me as a kind of natural LEGO block. If assembled resourcefully, a collection of stipes could transform into a charging cheetah, or the larger-than-life head of a horse."

Back home in his courtyard studio, he set to work on making the flotsam come to life.

"I assembled it on a wire frame, which I rooted into a cement base," he says. "I applied varnish and colour to enhance the movement and energy of the piece. The final step was covering the whole sculpture in fibreglass resin to give it indefinite durability."

De Beer had created a horse bolting at full tilt. Standing back, he saw that the result was bold, energetic and dramatic - a sculpture frozen in perpetual movement thanks to the sinuous lines of his unorthodox material. And because he had harvested dried kelp, there was not a whiff of ocean about it.

"There's an addictive thrill in realising you've just created something powerful out of nothing," he says. "It's probably unprecedented, too. I did online research and couldn't find anything like it."

Since then, De Beer has produced dinosaurs, more horses, big cats, wild dogs - a 25-piece collection of life-size sculptures.

From first exhibition to famous clients

In November, after approaching Cape Town's Youngblood Gallery, he landed exhibition space in his first group show. His work transfixed passers-by. Leaning in to pore over an outsize horse head, an English tourist narrowed his eyes and turned to me. "Who's the artist?" he asked. "Must be famous, right?"

If De Beer isn't well-known yet, he's attracting attention from those who are. In December, Lungelwa Manona, wife of the Archbishop of Cape Town, Thabo Makgoba, knocked on his door. Could she have De Beer's business card, please? He had mounted a kelp horse on the pavement outside his home, and it had caught her eye.

But if Manona wants her own pterodactyl, say, it is likely to set her back a few grand. De Beer's kelp creations fetch up to R65 000.

Initially the sculptures - such as his first horse - took a month to make. Now they take a week. "What started out as an eccentric creative experiment just a few months ago, has earned me word-of-mouth commissions until November - including a request for a 2.5m equine head for a 60m superyacht," he says.

"The horse heads seem to have the biggest commercial appeal - they're what most commissioning clients want."

What's next

De Beer says he wants to build stranger, even larger works.

"This year I'll start playing with life-size elephants and giant heavenly beings. There's no limit to what you can make because there are mountains of this raw material just languishing on the beach. Best of all? Nobody seems to want it."

De Beer is exhibiting at Cavalli Estate's Equus Gallery in Somerset West until February 8.