After engaging with various exhibitions of his pottery, I am forever intrigued by the complexity of pottery master Mpho Gorewang’s forms.
The craft expressed win clay is an approach to deformation not as a form of asymmetry based on universal standards of form, but a subversion of balance in every sense.
There seems to exist a disproportion in inner and out diameters of companion
pieces, often the cracks and slurry dry up as decorative elements that occur beyond
the wheel, a wildness that can’t be domesticated morphing into sculptural
dimension.
His experimental designs that seamlessly incorporate stones, beads and glass elements into some of his pottery and ceramic art ,have become a signature that signifies a craft that has matured over decades of tireless work.
His groundbreaking artistic practice is one enflamed by a passion for fire and earth. His sculptural pottery is evidence to this aesthetic, where, each pot shifts and twists around an invisible axis without orientation of stasis.
Intricate shapes that evokes spirits, confronts the observer with both the bestial and beautiful, not as contrasting forces but unfolding as entwined states of being.
And Gorewang’s technical skill, drawn from tutelage of vast array of revered pottery
masters who made Ikageng and Potchefstroom their home is evident as paying homage to testimonies of diverse heritage.
And historically, Potjies stroom, “the stream of clay pots”, contributed to the tradition that has been practiced in the region since time immemorial, and Mpho Gorewang has taken forward the tradition with an uncanny sense of reforming what could otherwise be without form.
Mud, clay, the surreal merger of water and earth cupped and shaped to contain spirits, some filled with melodic humming of insolent life and others standing mute, their orifices contorted in sombre song.
Through his longstanding interest in pottery, Mpho Gorewang is committed to rejecting idealised notions of beauty, his pots embrace a sense of vulnerability, and they are beyond ornaments of decorative, serving to insert indigenous knowledge into established art scenes.
As the clay spreads unpredictably according to the force of his hands, each spin directing emotions charged with historical memory when people of the region used earthenware, each vase bringing together breaths and fires from a different time.
His works bear varied personal traces that meet and coexist with those of his ancestry, and radically transform what pottery and ceramic art can be.
And through interconnections between the past and present, his art forms manifest as forging a new system of value that goes beyond polished practice.
Images by: Mpho Gorewang and North West University Gallery Archives
