LUCINDA MUDGE

(b. 1979 Knysna, South Africa)

Lucinda Mudge is a contemporary South African artist working primarily in the medium of ceramics. After graduating from the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town (2000), she spent the following years between Cape Town and the UK before moving to Keurboomstrand, Plettenberg Bay, where she now lives. 

Mudge has an intimate relationship with failure, comments arts writer Fay Janet Jackson. As a ceramicist, her chosen medium is fragile by nature, and prone to fracture. Sudden changes in temperature in her kiln can cause her large-scale vases to crack, crumble, or collapse, rendering months of hard work futile.

In Mudge’s love affair with ceramics, this crazing of clay is akin to heartbreak. It can start slowly – small cracks appearing and spreading, familiar patterns disintegrating, once bright hues fading into oblivion – or it can all fall apart without warning. “It’s a brutal choice of material,” says the artist, and, like love, it can bring both great joy and great misery.

Mudge’s extraordinary vases captivate the eye with their rich colours and intricate detail. Yet beneath their glimmering surfaces is a familiar world simmering with paranoia and tension. Both a visual and a socio political record, her collection of vases draws inspiration from a wide variety of references, including cartoons, pop songs, fabric designs and Art Deco vase patterns, resulting in whimsical collisions of the popular and refined, the mundane and elevated, the violent and the beautiful.

This range of contemporary and historical sources merges to present a complex narrative familiar to many South Africans. With hand-mixed glazes and stains, and produced painstakingly slowly over the period of a full year, each piece is as unique as the narrative it tells. Themes, images and text are constantly repeated and reshuffled, embodying in their very fabric humanity’s ability to carry contradictory impulses simultaneously.

The choice of the vase as a canvas is not without significance. Commonly a functional household object, the vase has a presence which is genuinely welcoming and affirming; a familiar object that is usually intended for the home.

Lucinda Mudge has worked in major corporate and private collections nationally and internationally, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Guernsey, the Netherlands, Italy and Russia. Lucinda’s work was recently exhibited at the Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain, as part of the exhibition Making Africa (2015). 

Her work is included in the following publications: African Generation, the power of design published by Langages du Sud (2019);  Making Africa - A Continent of Contemporary Design (2015); The Bauhaus: #itsalldesign, published by Vitra Design Museum, edited by Mateo Kries & Jolanthe Kugler (2015) and VASE: Function Reviewed, curated by Brian Kennedy, Kilkenny Arts Festival, Ireland (2016). 

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2023 All is Well, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2021 Nothing’s Ever Enough, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa

         Everything All The Time, Everard Read, London, UK

2019 Love Story, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

         Hello Pretty Girl, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa 

         Space is the Place, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa

2018 Investec Cape Town Art Fair solo booth,with Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa 

         Space is the Place, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa

2017 Pixel Vases, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

         The Wolf Is Always Near, Everard Read, London, UK

2016 Kill You Eat You, Circa on Jellicoe, Johannesburg, South Africa

2015 Take What You Want, Knysna Fine Art, Knysna, South Africa

2014 Lasers in the Jungle, Gallery at Grande Provence, Franschhoek, South Africa

2013 The White Tiger and Other Stories, Knysna Fine Art, Knysna, South Africa

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2023 What I Feel When I Think About The Cosmos, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa

2023 Bitches Brew, Everard Read Johannesburg, South Africa

2022 Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

         Things I’d like to remember, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

         3D in 2022: Contemporary South African Sculpture, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

         Seduction, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

         Ancestors & Dreams in African Art, Jacaranda, New York, USA & Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

2021 Spring Show, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

         OFFERING, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa 

         In Conversation, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

         Oasis, 25th anniversary exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2020 Two person exhibition with Frances Goodman, SMAC, Stellenbosch, South Africa

         Against Interpretation, Everard Read, London, UK

         IMAGO, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa

         Staring Straight to the Future, online group exhibition, Everard Read, South Africa & UK
         On Being, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa

         TINY2020, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

2019 MAKING AFRICA, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas, USA

2018 MAKING AFRICA, Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

         MAKING AFRICA, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

2017 FNB Johannesburg Art Fair, represented by Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

         Investec Cape Town Art Fair, represented by Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

         MAKING AFRICA, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands

2016 1:54 Art Fair London, represented by Everard Read, London, UK

         VASE – Function Reviewed, National Craft Gallery, Kilkenny, Ireland

         FNB Johannesburg Art Fair, represented by Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa

         MAKING AFRICA, CCCB Barcelona, Spain

2015 MAKING AFRICA, Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain

         MAKING AFRICA, Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Switzerland