Blistering Truth
2022
Ceramic, oxide, glaze, glass, fencing nails
470 x 520 x 480 mm
About the artwork
Depicting the fluidity of borders, Roberts’ ceramic sculptures use borders as metaphor for our shifting identities in different spaces. Cuts, piercings and demarcations represent cultural differences and divisions, which emphasise the blurred parameters of identity and how an object’s placement in space can refer to things other than itself, acting as a memory trigger. “My intuitive response to clay enlists the rich and multileveled reference that ceramics has as a medium, evoking the permanence and impermanence associated with time,” Roberts explains.
Mellaney Roberts is a contemporary Ceramist who graduated with an MTech (Cum Laude) in Fine Art at Nelson Mandela University in 2017. Roberts is currently reading towards her PhD in Fine and Studio Arts at the Tshwane University of Technology. She participates in numerous public art projects as well as local and national art exhibitions. Mellaney received numerous awards, including the Nina Hole Memorial Residency Award at Guldagergaard, International Ceramic Research Center in Skælskør, Denmark. New Signatures Award at The Epsac Community Art Centre NMMU Exhibition and the Best Student Award at the Regional Ceramic exhibition of Ceramic South Africa; she has been selected as one of the top 100 South African Artists for the Sasol New Signatures and the Absa L’Atelier national art awards.