biography
Jacob Bartmann is a visual artist who lives and works in Vienna. His work focuses on invisibilities and the relationships with – and between – material actors.
Read more
His craft apprenticeship in ceramics, which preceded his art studies, has formed a central basis for his work since 2010.
Clay - often understood as representative of the earth or the planet as a whole - plays an important role in this. As a material that has been “hidden” for millions of years, clay becomes a medium for him to speak about the invisible.
The invisible can be marginalized forms of labour or nature/culture processes. By thematizing clay, Bartmann emphasizes a relationship to the earth. This often occurs through site-specific works or installations that incorporate ceramic or clay objects.
biography
Ludwe Mgolombane is a ceramist born in 1984 in Umtata, Eastern Cape, South Africa. Primarily focused on sculpting the human form in the setting of his memories of home, as a child exploring the vast landscapes of rural Eastern Cape. He studied Ceramic Design at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, a steady body of work has grown and honed the narrative of his sculptural views.
Read more
In previous works that have won him awards, his gaze, has been contemplative of transitional experiences in the practice of amaXhosa traditions. In 2018, his first solo exhibition titled 'The Scramble Continues' hosted by Gallery Noko saw defined abstractions of semi-rural into township bustling life. He appeared in the RMB Turbine Art Fair, Johannesburg in 2019 and was the recipient of the 2020 Lithuba Lakho 'This is Your Chance' award in the Eastern Cape Art Competition. In 2022, he received the Ceramics South Africa's 3rd merit national award within the 'New Signatures' category.
His process includes, mixing clay with any organic combustible materials, such as leaves,
straw and pine needles that burn away, leaving a grassy, gritty textural finish highlighted using oxides.
Now residing in Cape Town, Western Cape works are being created within residency studio spaces. Mgolombane had his first solo exhibition in Cape Town, in November 2023.
Melissa
Barker
Ceramic Artist
biography
Melissa Barker is an established ceramics artist, a qualified French chef and Archaeologist, based in Cape Town, South Africa. She has a Master’s of Arts degree (Cum Laude) in Archaeology focusing on ancient food and ceramics.
Read more
As Olivia Barrel so eloquently puts it: “Barker pays homage to a collective material past and draws it into dialogue with unknowable future. In hand-marbled porcelain, recreated ancient cooking pots and nest-like vessels, we are reminded that our personal, particular timelines are bound up and convergent in the ancient shared one. Her practice frequently draws two or more of these elements together – with specific emphasis on the archaeological as both method and metaphor for making new ceramic work” (Clay forms, 0ctober 2023).
In February 2024, she participated in a four-week ceramic residency with Polish artist Monica Patuszynska. This residency resulted in conceptualizing a whole new body of work currently in progress.
In April 2023, she exhibited her first solo exhibition at Eclectica Contemporary (Cape Town) entitled ‘Mud’.
In November 2022, she participated in the annual ASOR Convention (American Society of Overseas Research), where she presented her chapter on experimental archeology, based on her dissertation and experimental work carried out during her residency ‘Nuhutimmu’, from August to September 2020 at Imiso studios of Andile Dyalvane and Zizipo Poswa.
I am an artist and archaeologist by heart and trade. Archaeology inspired my venture into clay, but it took a while for the two to settle in together, in myself. I excavated many years and the joy of finding pottery artifacts created thousands of years ago in strata of soil, has formed the basis of my work. Layers of thin porcelain coils or thick raw mud glazes reflect this. When we excavate the artifact, it is caked in ancient mud and only after washing the pottery, the real beauty and meaning are revealed. Only then, do you really see the artist beneath all the layers. Archaeology is destruction. But to accumulate new knowledge, you have to dig deeper. Being an artist is the same, we also must dig deep within ourselves to understand that which is around us. Ancient civilizations came, conquered, changed, and destroyed the land. Over and over this happened, layer over layer. Each society brings their own ways, destroying what was before them, for the sake of their survival and the continuation of its culture and beliefs. We still do this…
My conceptual work is deeply embedded in the vessel as a metaphor for home. Be that the external home such as nests or hives but also the body of a person as a vessel of home, inside ourselves. And how this search within us, is also a destruction of sorts, of self, to go deeper and I feel this is reflected to us in the external, as a search for a place to belong. When an artifact is created in ancient times, the use is only known to the maker, this is also true for the place/landscape it was created in. In the event of destruction, the artifact and place/landscape are covered in layers of earth for hundreds of years. The only time that an artifact, and the integrity of the place, and its true purpose stay intact, is when it remains unexcavated. But after excavation, the artifacts use is now shaped and imagined by the archaeologist. The interior landscape of the scholar interacts with the artifact and the exterior landscape in which it is found, which in turn gives new meaning to the object and place.