This exhibition includes work produced during an intensive three-week residency at the Villa-Legodi in March 2026 by four master ceramists — Nicholas Sithole, Clive Sithole, Sbonelo iHubo leNgabadi, and Ludwe Mgolombane — as well as that of nine students from the University of Pretoria (Beck Glass, Laura Krog, Lehlohonolo Nale, Zita Oranje and Chelsey Samson) and the Tshwane University of Technology (Mohaladitwe Gumede, Adalgisa Mendes, Zama Shabalala, and Mkhululi Shongwe).

As writes Olivia Barrell, the artists on exhibition “span four generations of ceramic practice in South Africa — a living chain of influence and inheritance, in which each artist has received something from those who came before, returning it to the world transformed. To watch them work, side by side, was to understand that a tradition survives not in archives, but in the exact moment one hand shows another what it knows.”

She adds that, “As a sculptural medium, clay occupies a complex and important place within South Africa’s art history. It is a material for human making that reaches back to the earliest expressions of creativity on this continent; and yet, it remains largely absent from the South African fine art world, both today and throughout the past several decades. In this way, the exchange of knowledge that took place during the residency, in which each practice quietly influences the next, like how fires in proximity share heat, was also a gesture towards the future; a deliberate act of transmission. Central to its vision was the sharing of knowledge, offering, in the most immediate and material of ways, a knowledge that might otherwise remain undocumented.”

The exhibition is supported by the Claire & Edoardo Villa Will Trust and held in partnership with Art Formes and the Kromdraai Impact Hub.

Featured (clockwise from top left): Nicholas Sithole, Sbonelo iHubo LeNgabadi, Ludwe Mgolombane, Clive Sithole