I have been engaged in a conversation with Andile Dyalvane for about 4 or 5 years where we have talked about having a ‘ceramic’ conversation. I saw this as being a sort of visual conversation about our respective roots where we could ‘speak’ to one another ‘beautifully.’ In 2008 we began working on a project with two other artists, Christina Bryer and Zizepo Poswa (also from Imiso) which was called “Exchange”. It was a four way visual conversation in clay where we ‘met one another’. After spending time together talking, what came up very strongly for all of us was our childhood memories of clay in our homes. It was wonderful to unravel these memories together and for the first time I thought hard about my own ancestral connections to porcelain.

The more I looked at my family’s relationship to ‘China’ and china – and took a more conscious look at what I had grown up with visually, the more fascinated I became with the very obvious outworking in my hands ....

It was as though the script was written from the first step one of my earliest forbears made off the sea and onto South African soil. He was Abraham de Smidt ( 1755 – 1809) who captained ‘The Middelberg’ ship of the Dutch East India company which he scuttled in Saldana Bay in 1781. The ship bore precious cargo from the East, of which much was porcelain which he sent to the bottom of the sea, rather than let it be captured by the British. I grew up with these and other stories of the castle and Jan van Riebeck as a child. The Middelburg wreck was salvaged when I was about six years old and I found the endless discussions of my aunts and grandmother who were de Smidt’s really boring. They spoke much of these things and of living on Robben Island as young girls…

In these vessels I have tried to follow the memories and feeling of all of this and of the things of nature which I love, and so have placed my belonging here. Our incredibly vital and creative spirit in this country owes much to the fact that we have an extraordinary cultural tapestry. We all have a place and a song to sing and we define one another and ourselves as we engage consciously with all aspects of this.

The underlying “ground” of the vessels - the china clay from England (where other of my forbears come from) and the mica, feldspar and silica from South Africa mirror my own DNA which has its make up in both places.

In the large vessel, I have tried to create a layered artefact that has as much presence in terms of the earth that it is spun from, as providing layered imagery from these specified (and very limited) cultural perspectives. I have specifically used photocopied images from “Our Three Centuries” (1652 – 1952) by Victor de Kock as it most eloquently mirrors the skewed ‘history’ which I grew up being taught at school.

The whole range of the physical, the metaphysical, history, memory, and methods of depiction must always be limited and ‘framed’ by our individual capacities for perception. I titled the larger work I ‘sing’ myself as I can do no other.

The smaller vessels were not thrown on the wheel, but are slip cast and by nature are very different. There is not so much a sense of the spinning soil of the thrown vessel, but rather the fluidity of the water (by which my Dutch and later my English forbears arrived. ) I see them as a ‘wave like’ installation set out on sea sand.

I have again used photocopied images from_”Our Three Centuries” (1652 – 1952) by Victor de Kock as they provide some clues to the ways different people and cultures have been depicted in our recent history. There are very particular cultural frames here, and I present them consciously for what they are (and are not). Nowadays there is air and light enough to investigate these histories and fragmented cultural depictions.

I have included pieces with smoke from the candles which were lit alongside these vessles . They refer to shared histories of damage and to the redemptive possibilities of new ceremonies. The vessel with the red dot of glaze is my symbol for the love and openheartedness which transcends all ills.

Having worked with three other people to “make exchange“ last year, I embarked on a more personal exploration of my own relationship to my ancestry in this country. I have a fascination for the fact that three hundred years after my forbear Abraham De Smidt brought Chinese porcelain to the Cape with the Dutch East India Company.. I am still immersed in working with this precious material.

“I sing of myself here planted” are my personal developments from last year’s explorations.