Sven Christian [SC]: With Small Things, the aim is to learn about how different artists approach the transition from, say, a model or maquette to realising larger works. How do you test ideas, materials, or the structural integrity of a largescale work in advance? What changes in the process? How do you go from that initial seed to the finished work? And do you always make maquettes, or was that specific to this project?

Joni Brenner [JB]: Many of my sculptures are small, and when I make them, I don’t usually imagine them as maquettes for something larger. I like working with unfired clay because I like its fragility and vulnerability; its capacity to crumble and reintegrate with the earth. On a small scale, and with clay you don’t intend to fire, it is possible to work without an armature and without hollowing out the sculpture. Working with unfired clay on a larger scale is much more difficult, because the clay cracks and dries and doesn’t easily attach to an armature. I haven’t really made much largescale sculpture. When Benji [Liebmann] and Mary-Jane [Darroll] approached me to participate in the 2014 Winter Sculpture Exhibition, I said, ‘No, my sculptures are too small and vulnerable for outside. They encouraged me, and offered to arrange for Angus Taylor at DSW to help me to upscale and cast my sculptures in Bronze. They indicated it was a simple process of scanning the maquettes to create steel armatures which would then need to be packed with clay to establish the shape, and that it was only the surface that could not be mechanically produced I agreed, because it sounded like an exciting opportunity. It didn’t sound too onerous, and I set about making some small sculptures in clay, this time, with the idea in mind that they were to be upscaled. There were four small clay skulls which were to be upscaled. When I arrived at DSW there were four armatures waiting for me, they were abstract forms that looked only vaguely like my small maquettes.

It felt daunting, and I had got quite a shock. I might have known it would be more arduous than I had imagined when Angus called to say that I would need about half a ton of clay! With this huge mountain of clay and these four abstract armatures, I suddenly knew the process would be different to what I had imagined, and I had to adjust quickly.

It was difficult. I had to slam that clay into the armature to more or less get the shape. It felt like I could have made any number of different shapes or forms — the armatures did not seem to guide me in any precise way. That’s when I started really looking at the small maquettes and using them to guide the translation. Essentially, the upscaled sculptures did retain a recognisable relationship to the maquettes, but they are also very different. You can see that in the photographs of the large ones, when you look at them in relation to the maquettes. They’re related, but they’re also something else. Although I found the process very challenging, I think the resulting large-scale sculptures are more exciting than what a mechanical enlargement might have produced. Having been through the process, I see that the upscaled versions are alive and I realise that their life, if you like, comes from the very physical process of their making. You make different decisions working on a bigger scale and you use different parts of your body. Small sculptures can be cradled in the palm of one’s hand, cupped, or smoothed with one’s fingers, shaped with domestic-scale tools — a ruler, a dowel stick, a scraper. Working large requires larger tools: big planks of wood to shape and smooth rounded areas like the cranium or eye socket; your forearms or whole body to shift the clay into shape. It’s completely different. The experience of making large-scale sculpture was exciting, and I hope to do more. Making sculpture in more permanent, longer lasting materials can be costly, and one requires technical assistance and advice too, so it is also very different from working alone in one’s own studio.

SC: You speak about the smaller works as works in-and-of themselves. Can you say more about why that variety appeals to you — that it’s not a simple case of upscaling?

JB: When I make small sculptures, I am not generally thinking about them as models for upscaling, so they’re not really drafts per se.

SC: Did the small works exist before the 2014 commission?

JB: These particular four small sculptures were made in direct response to the invitation from Benji Liebmann and MJ Darroll to contribute work for the 2014 Winter Sculpture Exhibition at NIROX. I was experimenting with making some small skull sculptures in clay that might be interesting on a larger scale. Whilst I was working on them, though, and perhaps because the clay was very fresh and wet, the sculptures kept on sagging, becoming slumped and bottom-heavy, as if stuck to the table. It was frustrating. I picked them up and turned them on their heads to make them sag in a different direction. That was when I thought, ‘Oh, here’s something interesting for NIROX.’ They started feeling more like boulders tossed about or rolled, somehow excavated or thrown up from the earth in random formation. I became interested to see those in the Cradle of Humankind, as their ambiguous, tumbled and knocked- about quality echoed the fragmented and partial remains that have been excavated in the region. So, these sculptures emerged from an ongoing practice, but were made with the NIROX Sculpture Park, and the Cradle of Humankind landscape in mind.

The intention was to have four large bronzes ready for the 2014 exhibition, but I only managed to make three in time. The fourth was eventually made, with support from the Claire and Edoardo Villa Will Trust, in 2016 for the exhibition, A Place in Time, curated by Helen Pheby. In 2014, the first three were installed on a gravel circle which gave them a contained space and allowed them to be seen as a related group. The fourth sculpture was installed alone in 2016 on a mound close to the restaurant at NIROX, and at a later point it was installed near the rosemary bushes.

SC: I’m wondering if it makes sense to include some images from the Origins exhibition, so that people can see the difference between indoors, with all four, and the installation here?

JB: It has been interesting to exhibit all four together for the first time as part of my current exhibition Impact at Wits Origins Centre. I decided to display them on slim oval and circular felt mats. It holds them in conversation with each other. The two smaller ones are on a circle which recalls the first installation at NIROX in 2014.

SC: Where have those works been shown since?

JB: The fourth, and largest sculpture, Kin, has been at Norval Foundation, Cape Town, for the last seven years. The others are in private collections.

SC: Earlier you mentioned how the series might appear as being thrown up from the landscape, like they’d rolled there. That sense of them as a series is not necessarily going to be reflected in the Small Things exhibition, because we’re only showing one maquette. I guess that’s important to flag for readers.

JB: The four maquettes were cast in bronze in small editions, and it’s true they were made as a series, but they can also very happily be shown singly.

SC: You spoke about the material aspect of making the larger works on these armatures. What else was involved in that process, beyond the need for an armature or half-a-ton of clay?

JB: You definitely use your whole body. For the small ones, you use your hands, but for the big ones, you use your torso, your elbows, your knees, your shins, your feet — to push the clay around. So, it’s a very different bodily experience. You also need different tools. For the small ones, which were made in studio, I was using a ruler, a block of wood, a dry brush, or the back of a paintbrush to dig a hole for an eye or smooth the back of a cranium.

Working on a larger scale, you start looking around to see what you can use, and you find the strangest things to make interesting marks. I remember wondering how to get that smooth cavity of the eye socket. At DSW I found these large, heavy metal balls, like bowling balls. I don’t know what they were used for there they were perfect to swing around in the cavity of the eye to smooth it out.

Also, I suppose, small sculptures have far less surface to deal with. The bigger ones require more attention to surface variation. There is just more surface to deal with.

SC: But you can definitely still see the painterly quality in your treatment of surface in both.

JB: Yes, that is an insightful observation. I remember once juxtaposing a small clay head with a large, gestural and abstracted watercolour portrait which I had made using a broom. Although the two media are so completely different, there was a striking similarity in the quality of the mark-making. It really felt like one informed the other, so I do think the sculptures have a painterly quality. They’re different, I suppose, from a sculpture that’s made from found objects. This is still a very organic and painterly process for me.

SC: What happened after you put all this clay on the armature?

JB: Once the sculpting was complete, the foundry managed the process of making the mould and casting the sculpture in bronze.

SC: I’m curious about the alchemical aspects of that transition?

JB: Clay does its own thing. It dries, cracks, changes colour, and becomes powdery. Bronze, like clay, has its own properties and also changes and evolves with time. Kin, the fourth large bronze, has been outside, first at NIROX, and then at Norval, for almost eight years. Water had often pooled in the eye socket, and there was some corrosion which needed repatination, but overall, the effect of being outdoors had created a richness and a depth to the surface; it had evolved. Even though it is hard and tough, it is still very much alive and responsive to the elements.

SC: I was thinking about the material translation and what that means when you talk about using your whole body and the intensity of that labour, the various tools that you used... I wonder how much of that “muscle memory” is carried into the bronze; how much of that information is encoded or carried through in the casting process. I guess that’s where the mark-making and attention to surface come in?

JB: Well, one hopes that the intensity of the labour is captured in the material.