IN TUNE WITH THE LANDSCAPE: A work by Angus Taylor at the 2014 Nirox Winter Sculpture exhibition. Photograph courtesy Angus Taylor.

What does it take to be an arts writer? Ten enthusiastic and new arts writers are about to find out. Each has been carefully selected to participate in the inaugural Nirox Foundation Arts Writing Workshop which takes place at Nirox Sculpture park, near the Cradle of Humankind, north of Johannesburg over this weekend and the next.

Nirox Foundation director Benji Liebmann has been instrumental in bringing together senior students from the University of Johannesburg and the University of Pretoria in an arts writing initiative that will see them develop their craft under the guidance of independent art critic, Robyn Sassen, over two consecutive weekends in April.

A Place In Time, curated by American academic Helen Pheby in collaboration with Art Project director Mary-Jane Darroll is this year’s Nirox Winter sculpture exhibition. It opens to the public this year on May 7. But in the weeks before the opening, Nirox sculpture park will be alive with the sound of arts writers sharpening their words.

Sassen is delighted to announce the names of the ten writers selected to participate in this, the inaugural Nirox arts writing workshop: Monica Blignaut (Pretoria), Janine Engelbrecht (Pretoria), Nolene Gerber (Pretoria), Muziwandile Gigaba (Johannesburg), Leandré le Roux (Pretoria), Shenaz Mahomed (Pretoria), Lelani Nicolaisen (Pretoria), Cheree Swanepoel (Pretoria), Elani Willemse (Pretoria) and Colleen Winter (Johannesburg).

Selected on their academic credentials, their experience and their ability to describe their own writing priorities, the writers will each be commissioned to interview and write about a selected contemporary South African artist. Their writing will be polished and shaped over the next fortnight and Nirox Foundation will be publishing between six and eight of their pieces in a new publication relating to the forthcoming exhibition.

Visit http://www.niroxarts.com