Established in 1913, Everard Read is the leading gallery for modern and contemporary art from South Africa.

We are Africa’s oldest gallery representing South African artists with an authentic and considered practice from diverse backgrounds.

Our galleries are home to world-class exhibitions of artists across a variety of media and genres, from a wide-ranging group of South African artists and artist estates.

Everard Read has seven distinct galleries in four locations - Cape Town, Johannesburg, London and Franschhoek - all optimised to accommodate the breadth of our artists’ creations and envisaged as oases for the communities they serve.

Everard Read continues to maintain long-term representation for many artists as well as seeking out and nurturing promising, young talent.

Exhibition information:

Everard Read London presents Does Anybody Know What's Going On?, an exhibition of new ceramic vases and paintings by contemporary South African artist, Lucinda Mudge.

“I have been making ceramics for over a decade, relentlessly pursuing my practice despite the country’s battles with dwindling and irregular electricity supply,” says South African artist, Lucinda Mudge. 2023 was a particularly challenging year and power outages meant she was able to fire her kiln only a handful of times. This led the artist to pursue painting – a medium in which she has always felt at home. At the same time Mudge’s husband and brother fashioned a new hybrid solar kiln system. “This new body of work was fired in this way – a major breakthrough for me,” notes the artist. With these light tranquil paintings and heavy gold ceramic vases my ambition for this exhibition is to bring a sense of balance.

Mudge’s pictorial pottery draws inspiration from a wide variety of references – from pop culture and cartoon strips, to fabric and textile designs, Art Deco and poetry – resulting in whimsical collisions of the popular and refined, the beautiful and sometimes the violent, unsurprisingly in a country, notorious for using dark humour as a coping mechanism.

Captivating the eye with their luxuriant glazes and intricate detail, this collection of vases encompasses all of life – images unfolding with a filmic quality, revealing the artist’s witty, outrageous and provocative musings with their contradictions, riddles and yearnings.

Mudge’s paintings are infused with a kindred vitality and spirit as her vases. Foliage, feathers, birds, abstract shapes and symbols cascade down her canvases or swirl with the dizzying energy of an eddy. “Painting and ceramics have formed a neat duo in my studio,“ says Mudge. “This exhibition was made by focusing my time equally on both mediums.”

Free