The WATER Project Exhibition is a collaboration between the Pierre May Trust Foundation, The Peter Clarke Art Centre and the Montebello Design Centre.
With the generous clay donations from the Pierre May Trust Foundation as well as the light and airy studio classroom from Montebello Design Centre, educators from Peter Clarke Art Centre were able to design and produce lesson plans themed to the ideas and play of WATER.
This was a wonderful opportunity for learners from all over Cape Town to experience ceramic lessons in the beautiful setting of Montebello Design Centre. Schools which attended these lessons were Mary Kihn School for the Deaf, South Peninsula High School, Cape Kids, Maitland High School, Athlone High School, Isilimela High School and the Peter Clarke Art Centre Extramural learners.
During each class the learners did both a drawing and a clay task. They enjoyed moulding beautiful sea creatures from clay and creating unusual scaly textures. They made sculptures of ducks and fish, clay tiles with boats, and functional vases. Each took away with them a story of their watery creation – a story of an encounter with their clay creature, or where it will be placed in their home once it has been fired in the kiln and exhibited for all to see.
The students enjoyed the experience and were excited about the possibility of seeing their work in an exhibition.
Additionally, Peter Clarke’s Ibhabathane Project has been able to host teacher training events at the studio. Eleven educators from various Cape Town schools were invited to Montebello to explore the medium of clay which was facilitated by experienced art educators from Peter Clarke.
THE WATER PROJECT VIDEO
‘Water’ is the 2023 theme for the Montebello Design Centre’s WATER Project Exhibition.
The video shows a selection of short pieces, some of them first shown by the EITZ collective in their exploration of water as a climate change issue. These draw attention to the era of the Anthropocene, the time we now find ourselves part of, an era in which due to the heavy hand of mankind upon the environment there has been unprecedented die-back in the natural world and many environments are drastically changing.
Katherine Glenday celebrates the gushing of lovely spring water from the earth in ‘Endless’
Taryn Millar spells out the looming catastrophe of a warming world, a literal meltdown
Anne Graaff in A Wall of Tears brings attention to the web of life being ruptured and ancestral sorrow at the plight of our world. Tears, too, are water. We cry for our losses.
Erica Elke takes a swimmer on a journey in The Swimmer through increasingly polluted waters and wonders why we are so blind to what we are doing to our water.
Some of the artworks on the walls of Studio One at Montebello appear in The Water Project Video. See if you can spot them while viewing the video.
WHAT: WATER Project Exhibition
WHERE: Studio One at Montebello Design Centre, 31 Newlands Avenue, Newlands, Cape Town 7700
WHEN: Opening 11:00 Saturday 25 March 2023 INFO: T 021 685 6445 | E management@montebello.co.za | Visit
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See also Cape Town Green Map
