Anton Brink, Sunship’s Bass guitarist and local “tinkerer extraordinaire,” has taken on a new challenge, combining scientific knowledge with artistic and musical expression.
Anton Brink, Sunship’s Bass guitarist and local “tinkerer extraordinaire,” has taken on a new challenge, combining scientific knowledge with artistic and musical expression.
With a formal academic background in science and training in electronics, music and art he has embarked on a new creative endeavour to refurbish and recreate musical instruments into functional works of art.
For his latest project, Brink converted an almost unplayable guitar into a masterpiece.
He re-built a guitar, almost from scratch, for Lizzie Gaisford, a member of The Fishwives.
“I removed about four layers of paint, replaced the parts I couldn’t rescue, and re-curved the body,” he said.
He explained how the entire project was a learning curve, even as he worked to re-curve the body of the guitar, the fish shape started to form and he embraced it.
“[Gaisford] said to go with a watery, Fishwives-like theme,” which he said inspired the colour and form.
“The electrics were shot. I redesigned them into my own weird idea of how they should work.”
After a Master’s degree in physical sciences at Rhodes University and achieving his PhD in Applied Mathematics at Wits University, Brink chose to focus on his budding artistic career instead of the academic life.
“At the time I felt quite jaded by academia, having studied and worked in academic environments for 14 years, when I became a full-time artist,” said Brink.
Brink, inspired by Surrealists Salvador Dalí and René Magritte, has been creating art in the form of paintings, sculptures and assemblages since 1996.
He has been enamoured with music for even longer.
In primary school he played the piano and violin until he became bored with the monotonous rehearsing and took-up guitar, “mainly because my parents didn’t like it,” he said, in jest.
He took a liking to the bass guitar around 1990 and admits that, as much as he has a knack for all the string instruments, bass is his number one.
“Making instruments brings it all together into one,” he said.
With very few people creating this kind of art in South Africa, the possibilities are endless and Brink plans to push the boundaries.
At the moment, Brink is taking on these projects as an exploration to get through the learning curve.
“Nothing is formalised,” he said, which is the nature of his preferred work environment. He is open to the idea of commissions and hopes in the future to do this “professionally, as a creative person.”
Brink has exhibited his work at the National Arts Festival, as well as in Johannesburg, Cape Town and George.
He plans on exhibiting his new art-form in galleries as well as through live performances – through which he hopes to change the audience experience.
