Kirby van der Merwe learns about the current SOST free public art exhibition in Stellenbosch from curators Maryke van Velden and Pule Dloti.
When, this past May, I turned up to interview Maryke van Velden, chief curator of the exhibition (Un)Earthed – Exploring contemporary ceramic art in South Africa, she and assistant curator Pule Dloti were waiting for me in the Voorgelegen Museum in Dorp Street, Stellenbosch.
Behind them, on the wall of the exhibition space, was a line from Canadian poet and novelist Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces: “This is the duplicity of history: An idea recorded will become an idea resurrected. Out of fertile ground, the compost of history.”
Maryke and Pule were putting the final touches to the exhibition of ceramic artworks – made possible with the patronage of Private Clients by Old Mutual Wealth – which will run for a year from May 2024 until April 2025.
A Stellenbosch-based artist and academic, Maryke holds degrees in fine arts and illustration from Stellenbosch University. She won the Sasol New Signatures award in 2009 and served as the inaugural curator and creative manager at the Oude Leeskamer, up the road, from 2022 to 2023. Pule is a Fine Arts (Hons) student at Stellenbosch University.
Explaining the small number and the placement of the ceramic artworks, “We are limited to eight pieces,” Maryke said. “The Stellenbosch Outdoor Sculpture Trust (SOST), sponsored by Private Clients by Old Mutual Wealth, has been mounting a free public art exhibition in the centre of town each year since 2012.
“(Un)Earthed is this year’s exhibition. But exhibiting ceramic pieces on the street presents a challenge because of their fragility and size. How do you exhibit fragile ceramic artworks in an outdoor public space?”
As was the case with last year’s photo- graphic exhibition, eight large-format frames strategically placed around central Stellenbosch will each bear a photo of a ceramic piece, showing its details. “We hope that these will arouse curiosity and motivate people to visit and view the works in here,” she added. “The eight frames in town have limited us to only eight pieces of ceramic art.”
On show are the works of ceramicists Wim Botha, Githan Coopoo, Madoda Fani, Ceramic Matters, Lucinda Mudge Studio, Ben Orkin and Marlene Steyn – and of Maryke herself.
And their selection process, their criteria? “We had an initial idea of what we wanted and so we would approach the artists, looking at their catalogues to pick out the pieces that we felt represent South Africa’s broader visual culture. Since we were limited to eight, which is not a lot, we tried to say as much as we could with those few works.
“We wanted to put on a ceramics exhibition that is as broadly representative of our culture as possible, showing the multiplicity of South African identities. The eight artists come from completely different backgrounds and they represent our individual South African cultures, and each has their own vernacular and technical approach.
“And as you can see, there are elements of the traditional, socio-political, sombre, whimsical, satirical – even playful tongue- in-cheek humour.”
I was particularly taken by the piece being created by Maryke. “It is different from the others in the sense that I’m not a ceramicist,” she admitted. “The other works here are all made by ceramicists specifically as aesthetic pieces of art.” But Maryke’s is an installation of found objects: soil from Stellenbosch and shards of pottery she has picked up in the town. They are the raw materials for the work that will be produced during the course of the exhibition year. “This is still going to be filled up with soil,” she explained, “and on top of the soil there will be these ceramic shards.”
She opened her backpack and took out a handful of small pieces of pottery. “These are a small part of my collection. I’m always carrying fragments like these around with me because I pick them up all over Stellenbosch and keep them in my backpack until I can add them to my collection.”
Maryke couldn’t tell me exactly when she started collecting bits of broken pottery, but it was a number of years ago. “I’ve been picking up ceramic shards in the Karoo, on the West Coast, in the Eastern Cape. In 2021 they started installing fibre optic cables in Stellenbosch and they dug up a lot of pavement in the old centre of town. In the process of all this digging, many of these shards were unearthed. I’ve filled nine shoe boxes to the brim with different types. The ones with the very popular willow pattern were most probably produced in England. Some are from Asia. Most are from Western Europe, Germany and France as well as England. They sparked my interest.”
So 2021 was the starting point for this project. “I want to end up with something that is also an aesthetic object, an artwork made up of little pieces of domestic crockery. Thus fragments of objects intended to be used in a home – never intended to be seen as art – become a statement about social justice and equality.”
Her installation, she said, will have an air of nostalgia and will speak of colonialism and forced removals in Stellenbosch.
“I find it very curious that we happen to find ourselves in the museum next to an exhibition about forced removals,” she added wryly, and said that she hopes her art will tell a story about the people who lived their lives in Stellenbosch.
Speaking of their partnership as curators, she turned to Pule. “This collaboration is significant, and for me personally it’s special. I think it is such an accolade from the Trust. Our paths crossed about six years ago. Pule was a recipient of the SOST’s bursary programme when he was in grades 11 and 12. And I volunteered to be his tutor. So when the Trust approached Pule and me together, I thought what a beautiful full circle.” V
Initiation
“This is my first experience as a curator,” Pule Dloti told me. “I always say that I’m grateful for the support I have received ever since I decided, in grade 11, that
I wanted to become an artist.” A recipient of the SOST’s KickstArt initiative when
he was a talented grade 11 and 12 pupil at Stellenzicht Secondary School, Pule is now a gallery assistant at Oude Leeskamer and an assistant teacher at
the PJ Olivier Art Centre in Stellenbosch while he works towards his Fine Arts (Hons) degree at the university.
“My art is based mainly on my heritage and how Western culture influences African culture,” he said. “I focus on the initiation ceremony, especially the complex role of the mother as the person who raises the young men who attend the initiation schools. And the role initiation plays in shaping these young men’s perception of their parents.”
He went on to explain, “I was raised by a single mother. She was father and mother at the same time. So in my work I put my mom in a position where she doesn’t have a position: in a room where only men are supposed to be.”
This did not make sense to a lot of people, he chuckled. “I asked my friends who went to initiation school with me and had fathers what they thought about my artwork. And they said, now that I had explained it, it made sense to them.”