Four artists have put bronze and woven aluminium into the gardens at Mount Nelson. The walk runs for a year, and the hotel has hung a second show indoors to go with it.
Walk the gardens at Mount Nelson this season and the lawn has company. A bronze by Yinka Shonibare, Fabric Bronze II, hangs in a pose that looks caught mid-motion. Further along, William Kentridge's bronzes of branches, vessels and animals stand among the planting. The pink walls of the hotel sit behind all of it.
The Trail
The Goodman Gallery Sculpture Trail is a year-long outdoor exhibition, staged with Goodman Gallery in the hotel's historic gardens. It stays up until February 2027. Four artists are on it, and each works in a different material.
Shonibare and Kentridge bring bronze. Walter Oltmann contributes Carpobrotus, dated 2026, a piece in woven anodised aluminium that takes its form from coastal fynbos. Ghada Amer builds her sculptures from interwoven Arabic script. The materials give the walk two registers, cast metal and woven metal, both set against lawn.
Yinka Shonibare, Fabric Bronze II, in the gardens at Mount Nelson · Courtesy of Belmond
Indoors
Inside, the hotel has handed its rooms to a second show. Interior Weather was curated by Carmen Joubert with the Norval Foundation. It has no gallery room. The works sit in the lounges, corridors, patios and salons, so a guest meets them on the way to breakfast.
The show spans six decades of African art. Kate Gottgens is there with Hot as Hell. Dada Khanyisa and Eddy Kamuanga Illunga are in it, and so is the modernist painter Ephraim Ngatane. Like the trail, it stays up until February 2027.
A hotel garden is a good place to leave a bronze. Nobody hurries past it.
Sienna CaldwellMagugu House
The third strand sits in Magugu House, the concept store the designer Thebe Magugu opened inside the hotel this year. Its permanent gallery ran The Foreign Familiar until 27 August, curated by Magugu and Julia Buchanan. Mary Sibande and Wim Botha were in it, and Magugu's Mafeteng capsule, drawn from the Basotho blanket, carried the theme into clothes. The gallery works to a quarterly programme that pairs art with his latest collections.
The Visit
ARTROUTE leads a free art tour every Thursday at 17:00, with a specialist guide, and it covers all three exhibitions. Mount Nelson has stood at the head of the Company's Garden since 1899, so the sculptures have old company. Amura by Ángel León, the hotel's marine restaurant, is the obvious place for dinner afterwards.
The Goodman Gallery Sculpture Trail and Interior Weather are on at Mount Nelson, A Belmond Hotel, Cape Town, until February 2027. Reservations through belmond.com.
Photography courtesy of Belmond · Mount Nelson, A Belmond Hotel, Cape Town