This spring, a walk through the winery precinct at Benguela Cove becomes something closer to a safari. A cheetah waits mid-stride, two giraffes lock necks in bronze, and an owl watches from the shadows. Walker Bay has a new reason to linger.
There is a moment, walking through Benguela Cove Lagoon Wine Estate on the edge of the lagoon, when the estate seems to hold its breath. The fynbos gives up its scent on the wind. And then, quite without warning, you meet a cheetah. Not a real one, but a bronze so alive with movement that you slow your step out of instinct.
From 2 October, the estate becomes home to an extraordinary exhibition by the British wildlife sculptor Carol Bryant. Up to eighteen bronze and resin works are placed along the walk through the winery precinct, revealing themselves one by one as you move through it. They inhabit the landscape as their subjects once inhabited the wild, with stillness, with weight, with the quiet sense that they have always belonged here.
The cast is worth the walk. A pair of giraffes lean together, caught in the slow-motion combat of necking bulls. A black rhino lowers its head. A warthog trots past on stubby legs, an otter arches its back, and a hunting leopard flattens into the grass. Each carries the mark of decades of looking. Bryant has studied African wildlife across Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Namibia and England, in the wild and in conservation settings, and once volunteered with cheetahs and wild dogs at the Ann van Dyk Cheetah Centre near Pretoria.
South African visitors may already know her hand without realising it. Bryant’s portrait bust of Archbishop Desmond Tutu stands beside his resting place at St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town, and an edition of that bust travels to Benguela Cove for the exhibition. Her accolades include Best Sculpture at the MIWAS International Wildlife Art Exhibition and at the Southern Nature Art Exhibition, and she exhibits regularly at Leonardslee Lakes and Gardens in West Sussex.
For Benguela Cove, the exhibition adds the one thing wine alone cannot. The estate has always been built around the meeting of land and sea, a place where every part of the guest experience is chosen with intention.
The exhibition opens as the Southern Right whales return to Walker Bay, one of the finest land-based whale-watching coastlines in the world, and runs right through the summer. A morning among the sculptures, a tasting on the terrace, lunch at the Moody Lagoon restaurant looking out over the water..
Every piece in the exhibition is available to purchase, quietly, throughout the six-month run, so a chance encounter on the walk can become a piece that comes home with you. The works range from smaller studies to statement bronzes for a garden or entrance hall, and the estate team can arrange everything from viewing to delivery.
The exhibition is free to all guests visiting the estate, whether for a tasting, a meal or a stay, and a digital map of the precinct walk and a full catalogue are available on arrival by QR code. It runs from 2 October 2026 to 31 March 2027.
For those who like to be first, there is a private view on Saturday 3 October from 3 pm to 5 pm, an afternoon in the company of the artist herself, by invitation.
For more information visit www.benguelacove.co.za
