The North-West Ceramics Foundation is pleased to announce Dr. Ronnie Watt as their next speaker for their Speakers Series. Dr. Watt will present via Zoom on Sunday, February 27, 2022, 11 am Pacific Time. This daytime presentation will allow interested parties from Europe and Africa to attend. All are welcome, but registration is required. Please see here or below to register for this exciting talk.
Dr. Ronnie Watt is a collector and specialist researcher of South African studio pottery and studio ceramic art. He is a graduate and postgraduate of the University of South Africa. His Master’s dissertation addressed South African studio pottery of the later twentieth century and its Anglo-Oriental label. The focus of his PhD was a contextual history of South African ceramics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He has published numerous articles on South African studio pottery. After retiring from his career as journalist and producer of television programmes, he emigrated from South Africa to Canada in 2015 and is now resident in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island where he continues his research and writing.
Dr. Watt’s lecture will discuss what is a distinctive feature of South African ceramic art, the expression of identity within a multi-cultural society. Contemporary ceramics produced by both white and black ceramists reveal the practice of cultural referencing to be a conscious engagement with issues of identities, values and meanings, which are expressed as complex symbolism and metaphor in the visual vocabulary. The lecture will refer to works by 20th and 21st century South African ceramists such as Maggie Mikula, Andile Dyalvane, S’bonelo Thau Luthuli, and Michelle Legg.
To register for this talk, please register (free of charge) here: