For Christmas 2024, the team at Montacute asked me to create a “South African-themed Donner” (the thunder reindeer) for their Christmas Reindeer World Tour. With these instructions, I chose the Kudu, a large African antelope species, as my subject. And so the Anima series was born…
The Kudu is #1 in Zac’s Anima series – the first he created.
The word “Anima” has its most ancient roots in Latin and originally meant “breath” or “wind”. Over time though, it also came to mean “soul” or “life” and we derive many words – including “animal” – from it today. With this series of sculptures, Zac aspires to breathe a little anima into his animal subjects, creating totemic symbols that distil particular characteristics from each sculpture. The Anima series is both a celebration of the natural world and a reflection of our relationship to it.
ANIMA I
Grace | Awareness | The Hunted
Poised as if in the moment of spotting a predator (or hunter), the first Anima sculpture represents the tension between how regal and how vulnerable such a highly prized living trophy can be.
The Kudu has been made using several recycled pallets along with more recent additions of Oak and steel to aid with its longevity and structural integrity. It stands just under 4m tall from the ground to the tips of its lightning bolt horns. On completion, it was the largest structure I had built out of pallets.
