Arno Carstens' 'Immortal Blooms'
Updated: 3 days ago
Celebrated singer-songwriter Arno Carstens had a magnetic presence at the intimate Whirlwind Theatre in Johannesburg this weekend (Cover Image & Fig 3). The talented musician has earned his iconic status with South African audiences, having achieved prominence in the early 90s as lead singer of the Springbok Nude Girls. Carstens' would later pursue an illustrious solo career, studded by the industry accolades of Best Rock Album, Best Alternative Album & Song of the Year.
Having headlined every major South African music festival, Carstens' exported his home-grown brand internationally and performed at the Isle of Wight Festival, Glastonbury, V Festival, T in the Park and Hard Rock Calling. He has also toured with The Rolling Stones, U2, Bryan Ferry, Simple Minds, Ultravox, Paulo Nutini and The Police. Edwards (2018) states, "Carstens has amassed 20 top ten singles and won 5 SAMA Awards [1] during his career, so it’s no wonder he was asked to judge on South Africa’s X Factor in 2014". His stella repertoire and media prominence has solidified Carstens celebrity within the local & international music scene.
Carstens' stentorian [2] vocals and robust audience engagement has become characteristic of his live performances. Figure 3 depicts the electrified atmosphere he inspires together with David Watkyns [3], an accomplished Capetonian musician in his own right. Carstens delivered his most popular songs fluidly moving between English and Afrikaans renditions. The bilingual artist uses Afrikaans to give voice to loosely fact-based stories about growing up in Worcester [4]. Popularised as an English singer-composer, he began experimenting with Afrikaans in 2016, Edwards (2018) states, "...he had just released his debut Afrikaans album to honour his roots, called Die Aandblom 13. The first single from the album, Ontwaak, went on to win Song of the Year at the Bok Radio Annual Awards". The socio-political complexities of artistic expression, language, apartheid-culture and white identity during the early 90s is explored in more depth, in my article, Plum: Human Change Agents (Pillay 2026). The section, 'Joburg's Inner City in the 90s: The Perfect Storm', delves into the alternative music ecosystem and contextualises the bands, artistic collaborations, inner-city venues and the political fervour that influenced Carsten's contemporary work.
IMMORTAL BLOOMS
Arno Carstens' unplugged musical performance is complimented by his evocative exhibition of oil paintings.
'Dark and visceral' would be my immediate critique of the exhibition, 'Immortal Blooms', hearkening to my first encounter with Penny Siopis' [5] impasto expressionist painting, Still-life with water-melon and other things (1985) at the Durban Art Gallery (Fig 5). Her early work depicts haunting scenes of excessive tables, laden with food such as cakes, pastries, fruit, vegetables and meat, all arranged within decadently dark rooms. Her subjects during the mid 80’s were mainly banquets, painted in oil with incredible attention to detail. Retrospectively referred to as her Baroque Banquets, the paint becomes the embodiment of emotion and a metaphor for the human body, as the thick oil paint dries rapidly on the surface and dries very slowly on the inside, just like emotional hurt seemingly heals on the surface but inside it takes a long time to heal.
Similarly, Carstens' floral depictions (Fig 6 & Fig 7) also evoke associations with other organic matter, flesh, in particular, that changes in time, congealing, forming skins, losing its juices, putrifying. His impasto brushwork forms real shadows that are dramatic, texturally activating the surface, allowing his botanical subject matter to froth forward from dark, almost menacing backgrounds. Although presented as curated still-lifes, the organic materials tend to homogenise and infuse into each other, speaking to the temporality of all life and the inevitability of death. Ironically, the term, 'Immortal' could be antithetical [6] when unpacked within the context of Carstens' paintings.
I'm also reminded of 16th century painter, Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526–1593) [7], who I consider the first surrealist when the concept or "ism" didn't even exist. His work is remarkable for combining portraiture, illusion, visual wit and detailed observation of nature. At first glance, his paintings may appear playful or fantastical; on closer inspection, they reveal carefully constructed images in which individual objects form a coherent human face. I see conceptual similarities in Carstens' work as he associates human identity with the abundance and renewal of the natural world. I see distorted faces in Figures 9 & 10 morphing into being from ripe fruits, vegetables, flowers and other plants. Hints at the animalistic and predatory nature of humankind and existence. The artist animates the organic forms and unexpectedly injects humour and indulges in a visual jestering through shapes and forms.The floral composition connects the human being or non-human to maturation and the cyclical passage of time that all life is subject to.
As singer-songwriter turned visual artist, Carstens joins the ranks of other famous musicians who sought alternative forms of creative expression. These include, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Joni Michell, Paul McCartney, Ronnie Wood, John Mellencamp, Yoko Ono and Miles Davis. I am of the belief that any robust creative worth their salt often experiments with various mediums, audial, visual and most recently immersive (data visualisation). These become multimedia conduits for more complex, sensory storytelling and audience interaction. As a data artist, I would be intrigued to see Carstens conjoin his visual art techniques within his live musical performances. Musicians that have successfully done this through synchronised projection, spatial and digital mapping are Pet Shop Boys, Kraftwerk, Gorillaz, Massive Attack, Bjork and Jean-Michel Jarre. Whatever direction Carstens chooses to take his art, we know from his music, that he is mercurial, constantly reinventing himself and extending his creative agency into new disciplines.
Footnotes
[1] SAMA - South African Music Awards
[2] Stentorian - exceptionally loud, powerful and commanding.
[3] David Watkyns - David Watkyns is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Cape Town, South Africa. Surrounded by a musical family, David started piano at 7 years old and trumpet at 8, inspired by regular visits to concerts by the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra and listening to selections of his father’s 16,000 vinyl collection and songwriting books. He then graduated Bachelors of Music from University of Cape Town in Jazz Studies. David’s main instruments are vocals, trumpet, piano, guitar, drums, and bass.
[4] Worcester is a town in the Western Cape, South Africa. It is located 120 kilometres north-east of Cape Town on the N1 highway north to Johannesburg.
[5] Penny Siopis is of Greek descent and was born in 1953 in Vryburg in the Northern Cape Province, a little town to which her parents had moved after inheriting a bakery from her maternal grandfather. She studied Fine Arts at Rhodes University and pursued postgraduate studies at Portsmouth Polytechnic in England before taking up a lecturing position at the Natal Technikon in Durban. Siopis’ work is marked by three interests, the physicality of paint, the accumulation of found objects (including video footage), material memory, and the politics of the body. She has also continually engaged with the shifting social and political situations in South Africa (SAHO).
[6] Antithetical - directly opposed to or fundamentally incompatible with something else.
[7] Giuseppe Arcimboldo - was an Italian Renaissance painter, best known for his extraordinary composite portraits: human faces constructed from arrangements of fruits, vegetables, flowers, books, animals and other objects. Born in Milan in 1526, he worked during the late Renaissance, a period characterised by renewed interest in classical learning, natural history, scientific investigation, artistic experimentation and the representation of the natural world.
Important Links
Arno Carstens. Immortal Blooms. https://arnocarstens.xyz/collections/immortal-blooms
Arno Carstens. https://www.youtube.com/@arnocarstensmusic/about
Wikipedia, Arno Carstens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Carstens
David Watkyns. https://www.davidwatkyns.com/about-david.html
Expresso Show. David Watkyns performs 'Oh No! (This Could Be Love)' https://youtu.be/ZJRN7gubYYE
Plum: Change Agents for Human Music. https://www.lucellepillayart.co.za/post/plum-change-agents-for-human-music
List of Figures
Cover Images: Arno Carstens performing on stage (2026), Photo credit: Lucelle Bernadette Pillay; Carstens, Where Flowers Fall (2026), Oil on Canvas, 56 × 70 cm. (Image Source) https://arnocarstens.xyz/collections/immortal-blooms (Accessed 20 October 2026).
Figure 1. Springbok Nude Girls. Plug Music Agency. (Image source) https://www.plugmusicagency.com/springbok-nude-girls-release-massive-new-single-emerging-submarines-and-open-pre-orders-for-new-album-partypocalypse/ (Accessed 20 October 2026).
Figure 2. Arno Carstens (2018). (Image Source) https://www.thesouthafrican.com/lifestyle/arno-carstens-jets-into-the-uk-for-isle-of-wight-festival-and-uk-european-tour/ (Accessed 21 October 2026).
Figure 3. Arno Carstens performing with David Watkyns in Johannesburg (2026), Photo credit: Lucelle Bernadette Pillay. Digital composite.
Figure 4. Immortal Blooms infographic (2026). Copyright (artist) Arno Carstens.
Figure 5. Still-life with water-melon and other things (1985). Oil on Canvas, 242.5 x 180.5 cm, Rembrandt Van Rijn Art Collection. (Image source) https://nladesignvisual.wordpress.com/2013/08/03/penny-siopis/ (Accessed 21 October 2026).
Figure 6. Arno Carstens, The Gathering Tide (2026). Oil on Canvas, 40 x 40cm. (Image source) https://arnocarstens.xyz/products/the-gathering-tide (Accessed 21 October 2026).
Figure 7. Arno Carstens, Cardinal Tide (2026). Oil on Canvas, 45 x 35 cm. (Image source) https://arnocarstens.xyz/products/cardinal-tide (Accessed 21 October 2026).
Figure 8. Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Water (c. 1566). Oil on Canvas, 65 x 53 cm. (Image source) https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/giuseppe-arcimboldo-food-portraits (Accessed 21 October 2026).
Figure 9. Arno Carstens, Where Worlds Meet (2026). Oil on Canvas, 78 x 100 cm. (Image source) https://arnocarstens.xyz/products/where-worlds-meet (Accessed 21 October 2026).
Figure 10. Arno Carstens, Beautiful Devotion (2026). Oil on Canvas, 50 x 40 cm. (Image source) https://arnocarstens.xyz/products/beautiful-devotion (Accessed 21 October 2026).
List of References
Edwards, C. 2018. Arno Carstens jets into the UK for Isle of Wight Festival and UK/European Tour. https://www.thesouthafrican.com/lifestyle/arno-carstens-jets-into-the-uk-for-isle-of-wight-festival-and-uk-european-tour/ (Accessed 20 October 2026)
Ewbank, A. 2017. The Renaissance Painter Who Made Fantastical Portraits From Food. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/giuseppe-arcimboldo-food-portraits (Accessed 21 October 2026).
NLA Design & Visual Arts. 2013. Penny Siopis. https://nladesignvisual.wordpress.com/2013/08/03/penny-siopis/ (Accessed 21 October 2026).
Pillay, LB. 2026. Plum: Change Agents for Human Music. https://www.lucellepillayart.co.za/post/plum-change-agents-for-human-music (Accessed 21 October 2026).
SAHO (South African History Online). 2026. Penny Siopis Biography. https://sahistory.org.za/people/penny-siopis (Accessed 21 October 2026).
Web Gallery of Art. Allegories of the Seasons and the Elements (composite heads), Giuseppe Arcimboldo. https://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/a/arcimbol/3allegor/index.html (Accessed 21 October 2026).
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