For Lucinda Mudge, an exhibition is something that develops slowly. She spends much of the year making and living with her work, watching individual pieces gradually become a collection. Some of the vases in Collectors have been in her studio for a full year, giving her time to grow attached to them, including those that did not turn out quite as planned.
Ceramics can be unpredictable. Colours change in the kiln, glazes behave unexpectedly and months of work can produce surprising results. Mudge has come to appreciate these imperfections, finding that the unusual or awkward pieces can be just as important to a collection as the beautiful ones. Her richly decorated vases, often drawing on popular culture, decorative patterns and social commentary, have always made room for humour alongside more unsettling observations.
The exhibition also includes bookshelf paintings, which approach collecting from a different angle. Books accumulate over time, reflecting changing interests, tastes and experiences. For Mudge, a bookshelf can reveal a surprising amount about its owner, from early enthusiasms to later preoccupations, with humour and personal history sitting side by side.
A recent thirty-year school reunion also fed into her thinking about the exhibition. Reconnecting with people whose lives have taken entirely different directions brought home how our own collections of relationships change over time. Friends come and go, families grow and shrink, and homes fill with objects that are eventually passed on or dispersed.
Collectors finds something familiar in all of this. Whether gathering ceramics, books or memories, what we choose to keep, and what we eventually lose, becomes part of the story of a life.
About the artist
Lucinda Mudge (b. 1979, Knysna) is a South African artist known for her richly coloured, intricately decorated ceramic vases. A graduate of the Michaelis School of Fine Art at UCT, she lives and works in Keurboomstrand, near Plettenberg Bay. Drawing on everything from cartoons and popular music to textile designs and Art Deco patterns, her work often pairs playful imagery with observations about contemporary society. Her work is held in private and corporate collections internationally and has featured in exhibitions including Making Africa at the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain.
Images courtesy of Everard Read and Lucinda Mudge.
Exhibition Dates
1–31 October 2026
Artist-led Walkabout
Saturday, 3 October 2026 at 11:00
Location
Everard Read Johannesburg
6 Jellicoe Avenue
Rosebank, Johannesburg, 2196
