Thank you Louisa Walters for this lovely interview “The Art Of The Matter “ in JN Life Magazine, Winter 2019.
“If you’ve been to or walked past Charing Cross Hospital, you may have noticed two huge sculptures. One is Reclining Figure by Henry Moore, the other Core Femme by South African artist Jill Berelowitz (pictured, inset). The body is incomplete with rounded ends where the limbs and head should be – an organic composition reminiscent of a backbone where the individual torsos become vertebrae.
“I do love the female form,” says Berelowitz, who is responsible for creating the most masculine of trophies – the bronze ball and tassel cap handed to international rugby players on the occasion of their 100th cap. But pigeon-holing an artist who receives such critical acclaim is impossible as she can move from His Mind’s Eye, a bronze tree and cosmic sphere commemorating 400 years of Shakespeare’s genius, after celebrating the female form with The Diving Girl, which was commissioned by the Olympic Village in 2012. Berelowitz studied sculpture with Finnish artist Karin Jaroszynska and later at the Johannesburg School of Art, where she learned the technically complex process of lost wax bronze casting.
By the age of 23, with two young children, she had already opened her own studio in Durban and was doing lots of community art projects. While the female form continues to fascinate her,
and tribal South African art is a source of inspiration, sometimes males and females unite in her work as in Moving Forward, which sits in the centra reservation on Park Lane opposite the hotel 45 Park Lane. It is at this hotel that Berelowitz has had a seasonal change of direction, with her 3.6m high bronze Christmas tree in the lobby from 8 December. Reassuringly, the star at the top is held by both male and female figures."
