THIS year’s Ardmore Ceramic Art Cape Town exhibition, hosted annually at the Cellars-Hohenort Hotel in February, is inspired by the visual wealth of the Kalahari. The exhibition is open from 9 am to 5 pm from Friday, February 19 to Sunday, February 21.

Ardmore founder, Fée Halsted, said the ability of life to adapt and thrive in the extreme conditions of the Kalahari offered the KwaZulu-Natal- based artists a thought-provoking and fresh landscape and environment to work with.

She added: “The 2016 Kalahari Cats exhibition has been the most challenging and exciting exhibition for the Ardmore team to ever work on and I think that this collection includes some of our finest works ever produced.”

Ardmore Ceramic Art, based in the Caversham Valley in KZN, is associated with an abundance of colour, lavish plants with galloping exotic spotted and striped wild animals as subject matter.

For this exhibition the usual animals like zebra, leopard, giraffe, elephant and crocodiles have been exchanged with meerkat, badger, aardvark, ostrich, bat-eared fox, cheetah and black desert rhino.

“This new wilderness is a unique landscape that heavily contrasts with anything else that our artists have worked on before,” Halsted explains. “This is the first time they have had to use their expressive qualities to convey the stark and textured Kalahari, and they have responded to the plethora of Kalahari life with a new awakening and interest.”

Betty Ntshingila, known as the bird lady of Ardmore, has been working with raptors as subject matter for the first time, as well as lilac-breasted rollers, scarlet-breasted shrike, korhaan and hornbills.

Her social weaver-nest like vases are exciting works that Ardmore is looking forward to showcasing to their collectors at the exhibition.

Halsted has also been working with Teboho Ndlovu, a new talented young sculptor from Lesotho. His badger dish narratively illustrates the story of the honey guide leading the ferocious badger to a hive. The Ardmore artists love storytelling and Ndlovu was enthralled by this particular subject.

Ndlovu has hand coiled a large Leopard Monkey Hoopoe Bowl, depicting a playful chase between a leopard, monkey and hoopoe bird. He has filled the vacant spaces with protea flowers and painting master Mandla Ngwenga has added his talent to create a work that is breathtaking and fit for a stately home or art connoisseur.

Halsted and the Ardmore artists will also host two presentations on February 19 and 21 from 10.30 am to 11.30 am, giving guests the chance to engage with some of Ardmore’s finest sculptors and painters. Booking is essential for these presentations, so please visit www.ardmoreceramics.co.za or contact Clint Pavkovich on 082 3891395 or email clint@ardmoreceramics.co.za  for details.