Finding a South African voice: The first South African Clay Awards

By Ann Marais

The first South African Clay Awards exhibition, held at Rust-en-Vrede Gallery and Clay Museum in Durbanville, outside Cape Town, from November to December 2024, marked a significant milestone for South African ceramics. It followed the gallery’s accreditation as an affiliate member of the International Academy of Ceramics (IAC). The IAC formally endorsed the exhibition with this accreditation, underscoring its importance.

A distinguished panel of ten internationally recognized ceramic experts selected the works on display. These included Andile Dyalvane (South Africa), Dr Andre Hess (United Kingdom/South Africa), Digby Hoets (South Africa), Dr. Elizabeth Perrill (United States of America/Switzerland), Janet de Boos (Australia), Olivia Barrell (South Africa), Dr. Ronnie Watt (Canada/South Africa) Stanis Mbwanga (The Democratic Republic of the Congo), Professor Guanghzen Zhou (United States of America/China) and Professor Magdalene Odundo (United Kingdom/Kenya).

Over five hundred entries were received from South African ceramic practitioners, of which fifty works were chosen. Due to space limitations, this article highlights only a selection of these pieces. Therefore, readers are encouraged to visit the museum’s website to explore the full exhibition.

It should be noted that some of the ceramics crossed several different contextual boundaries regarding their content, subject matter, and conceptual intent, but only the most significant theme of such multi-layered work has been included in this text.

With excellence in craftsmanship as a given, the overall, most dominant features of this exhibition that are evident include a great diversity in creative expression; clear indications of an emerging South African “ceramic voice,” and in line with international contemporary trends, the creation of abstract form used as metaphor that express an existential zeitgeist in an increasingly anxious world.

To illustrate this last point, conceptual themes are expressed in works such as Nest II by Adéle Sherlock, a hand-built porcelain clay structure with extruded shapes and sprig moulds applied. She articulates the paradoxical states of fragility versus resilience confronted in life experiences. Sherlock uses a South African social weaver’s nest as an appropriately clever metaphor for this contrary state where a densely woven yet flexible nest made of delicate, pliable materials (grasses, etc) must protect against external environmental dangers, but at the same time be sufficiently strongly constructed to provide adequate and appropriate strength for the raising of the next generation of social weavers.

Nest II by Adéle Sherlock. Photo by the artist

Melissa Barker’s abstract, broken, reconstructed, poured, and marbled porcelain vessel Dissilence stands as a metaphor for hope, of overcoming tragedy and trauma transformed into something of refashioned beauty. It is a reminder that it is possible to heal, to use the detritus of broken dreams to renew self as a dried seed regains new life from the fertile juices of a re-awakening spring.

Guy Walter’s coiled, earthenware form Wind Whipped portrays a powerful, visual physicality in the clay of the natural maelstrom witnessed in today’s world weather systems that create natural disasters, such as tornadoes, flooding, and landslides. Walters has drawn upon ancient myth in the spirit of Gaia’ the primordial being and the first immortal to have sprung forth from the voice of chaos, whose wrath is violated by humankind’s abuse of this realm.¹

There are some ceramics in this exhibition that function as a kind of counterbalance to the existential anxieties that threaten to overwhelm our fractious world. They act like a quieter Adagio, the second movement in a symphony. They provide a space to centre oneself through the observation of the necessary, concentrated, quiet skill employed in creating classical ceramic form as in Dale Lambert’s wheel-thrown and assembled, stoneware clay Orange Vessel where the eye slowly travels up the lyrical, perfect profile of the vase.

South Africa has been dubbed “The Rainbow Nation.” An appropriate epithet that reflects the great diversity of this multi-cultural country with its vast, varying landscape environments, twelve official languages, customs, traditions, religions, architecture, cultural and religious rites of passage, flora, fauna and much more.

Land, a sense of place, belonging and ownership, is one of the most important and emotive resources characterising a sense of identity of self for South Africans.

Siyabonga Fani’s hand-coiled, burnished, smoke-fired terracotta vessel Mbokodo defines his sense of place in a response that is part ancestral in nature being his (sacred) ancestral isiXhosa homestead as well as his urban township home with its “tension and texture of surface that reflects a township energy and buzz”.²

Orange Vessel by Dale Lambert. Photo by Amadea Yacumakis

Some ceramists, in a desire to establish and promote a specific South African identity, are playing an increasingly significant role in the current cultural arena of South African art. There is an exciting upswelling that is rising to reflect, recover, restore those traditional African cultural artefacts, customs, crafts, religious and spiritual beliefs that have been unknown, unacknowledged and under-valued broadly in the public discourse in the past, not just in South Africa, but across the African Continent, with its vast wealth of fabulous art and cultural treasures that exist mostly in museums at this time and are not accessible to the general public, nor in educational centres for future generations.

In this exhibition, an impetus to celebrate traditional cultural, everyday, functional household ceramics is given voice and value. A particular physical characteristic of these wares is the blackened color resulting from firings conducted using natural materials (wood, paper, sawdust), a practice that has been the traditional way to fire pottery in Africa for centuries.

Pre-plastic, ubiquitous, traditional clay pots used for cooking, brewing, and transporting liquids were manufactured on-site by the different communities in a wide variety of size, form, and surface embellishment over the centuries. Madoda Fani’s exquisite, hand-built, incised, burnished, and smoke-fired ceramic pot entitled Ingqayi, shown here, is inspired by the traditional beer pot form.

Characteristic of traditional African societies is the close bonding and wisdom that fosters a symbiotic relationship with the natural world in which they live. A particularly moving, philosophical example of this is Sbonelo Luthuli’s hand-coiled, saggar-fired vessel Isiduli (isiZulu for anthill), used for traditional medicinal purposes. Isiduli vessels carry spiritual, respectful, and philosophical significance in that they acknowledge “the sacred geometry” of nature – the architecture of anthills that benefits ants but also humans as a carrier for healing medicines.³

A particular focus on African creativity that finds expression in the synthesis of diverse cultures in South Africa has given rise to what might be called cross-fertilization, whereby African and Western representation is blended in various art fora, such as ceramics.

This hybrid practice of melding together diverse cultural sources has long been a feature in the work of Clementina van der Walt. Her slip-cast, hand-painted earthenware vessels Mantelpiece Duo that blend her “colonial reminiscence of fireplace mantlepiece” cultural objects have been overlaid with subtle mark-making inspired by West African textile designs and motifs. She states that they represent a contemporary ‘Afro-centric style.”⁴

Hennie Meyer, Curator of the Exhibition, introduced a significant ruling on a particular aspect of the exhibition: no prizes would be made, thereby giving all entries the same acknowledged stamp of excellence.

It is impossible to make value judgments on works that exhibit entirely different skill sets and manufacturing processes, diverse interpretations of completely different aesthetic engagement, content, and subject matter. The only common denominator is the material clay, but even here, different clays require a different intellectual approach and manufacture considerations to successfully articulate the narrative that informs the work in question. Thus, the diversity in the following two examples gives credence to the impossibility of making authentic value judgments and thus justifies the dictum that there were to be no prizes on this exhibition.

Isiduli by Sbonelo Luthuli. Photo by Amadea Yacumakis

The hand-built, earthenware, and pit-fired baboon sculpture Louise the Baboon by Wilma Cruise carries the metaphorical weight of worldwide abuse over millennia by humans of other animals on its shoulders. Upon viewing, the extraordinary subtle handling of elements of the baboon’s posture speaks loudly in mute resignation articulated by its loosely hanging, passive arms, lying limply in gestures of hopelessness. The slumped posture of its torso bends under the impossible weight it must carry, whilst the deliberately unacknowledged sentience of the animal is alluded to by the undefined facial features as the head is turned aside in heart-breaking numbness. The overwhelming, infinitely subtle pathos provoked in this sculpture is almost unbearable to experience and witness.

The extraordinarily complex, 21st century technologically advanced, multi-processed, slip-cast, Parian clay vessel, textured with digitally printed ceramic transfers from ballpoint pen drawings of mycelium and geological, previously fired, clay shards that add contextual layers, referencing cosmic and ‘gestures of repair, survival and interspecies collaboration, stretch the viewer’s intellectual and aesthetic abilities to the limits. Eugene Hön’s vessel exhibits an elevated level of excellence in all aspects of conceptual thinking, advanced technical skill, visual beauty, and original creativity, with which few ceramists are blessed.⁵

The significance of this inaugural exhibition in terms of the promotion and public support it has generated gives the hope that such exhibitions will be continued on a bi-annual basis, maintaining the standard of excellence in all aspects and enabling a showcase of future innovation and development in the unique creative voice of South African ceramics. This will also give a general overview of a broader global connection.

Ann Marais is a South African ceramic artist and sculptor. A Fellow of Ceramics South Africa, she earned her BFA in Sculpture and Theory of Art (cum laude) from Rhodes University in 1991. Since 1975, she has exhibited in solo and group shows across South Africa, as well as in Hong Kong, New Zealand, and France. Her work is held in several South African museum collections. In addition to her practice, she is a published writer, workshop presenter, teacher, and curator.

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Special thanks to Rika Herbst for facilitating this article.