Conrad Hicks is an artist, blacksmith and tool-maker in Cape Town. He specialises in hand-forged metalwork, using only traditional blacksmithing jointing methods which he strongly believes are essential to the symbolic meaning of the finished form. 

Born in Cape Town in 1966, Conrad studied sculpture at the Cape Technikon and worked in the art and restoration field in London but was drawn to blacksmithing by his interest in the discipline of doing a ‘craft’. In 1991, he opened his forge workshop in Cape Town – today housed in The Bijou, an old Art Deco cinema in Observatory, which he bought and began restoring in 1998. 

Conrad sees his artistic practice as an instinctive search for beauty. Working intuitively, he allows his materials and labour-intensive process to determine the final form. In the process of cutting, pressing, heating, hammering and stretching metal, he discovers an archetypal language that calls to mind ancient art forms. 

Expressive and highly textured, his pieces have an intimate connection with nature, even as many veer towards abstraction. All of his work, from the most functional to the most purely sculptural, he sees as tools.