At Falconer Art Studios, we create and fabricate site-specific sculpture for public spaces, developments, hospitality projects and places of cultural significance. Our work encompasses bronze sculpture, relief, steel fabrication and mixed-media installations, with projects developed in response to both their setting and the people who will encounter them.

Sculpture That Belongs

We believe successful public art should feel as though it belongs where it has been placed.

The architecture, landscape, history and purpose of a site all become part of the design process. Sometimes the response is subtle: a series of small sculptural interventions discovered as people move through a space. At other times, the artwork becomes a focal point — something visible from a distance that helps establish the identity of a place.

This relationship between sculpture and setting is at the heart of our approach to public art.

Guardians of the Sunrise

Created for Club Med South Africa, Guardians of the Sunrise is a playful sculptural installation featuring bronze vervet monkeys interacting with a richly patterned ceramic mural.

Commissioned through Land Art Studios, the project brought together sculpture, ceramics, landscape and architecture. The tiled backdrop was created by Kalki Ceramics, while our bronze monkeys were developed specifically to inhabit and interact with the surface.

Rather than sitting apart from the architecture as conventional freestanding sculptures, the monkeys climb, perch and occupy the wall itself. Their placement turns the mural into a three-dimensional environment and encourages viewers to discover individual characters as they move through the space.

The project demonstrates something we particularly enjoy about public art: the opportunity to blur the boundary between artwork and architecture.

The Hindu Temple

Our work for a Hindu temple on KwaZulu-Natal's North Coast presented a very different challenge.

Here, sculpture formed part of a place with an existing cultural and spiritual identity. The work required sensitivity to its symbolism, setting and purpose, as well as an understanding of how sculptural elements would relate to the architecture around them.

Projects such as this remind us that public sculpture is not always about making the artist's voice the loudest one in the room. Sometimes our role is to interpret, fabricate and help give physical form to imagery and ideas that already carry deep meaning for a community.

The result is work designed not simply to occupy a space, but to become part of it.

From Concept to Installation

Public art requires more than the creation of the sculpture itself.

Scale, materials, structural requirements, durability, transport, fixing methods and installation all need to be considered from the beginning of the project.

Our studio and foundry work across the process, from concept development, sculpting and prototyping through to mould-making, bronze casting, steel fabrication, patination and final installation.

We can originate a sculptural concept ourselves or collaborate with artists, architects, landscape architects, interior designers and other creative studios to realise an existing vision.

Art as Placemaking

Increasingly, public art forms part of a broader approach to placemaking.

Within residential estates, hospitality developments, commercial precincts and public landscapes, sculpture can help create a sense of identity that architecture alone cannot always achieve.

It can reference local wildlife or history, create a gathering point, introduce storytelling into a landscape or give residents and visitors something that becomes uniquely associated with that place.

The strongest public artworks do not feel added at the end of a project. They become part of how the place is remembered.

Creating Work for the Public Realm

Every public art commission begins differently.

There may be a detailed creative brief, an architectural plan, a particular story that needs to be told or simply a space in search of an idea.

From there, we work collaboratively to develop a sculptural response that considers both the creative possibilities and the practical realities of making work intended to endure.

Planning a public art project?
Falconer Art Studios works with developers, architects, landscape architects, designers, artists and organisations to develop and realise site-specific sculpture for the public realm.