Lize Myburgh aims to capture that moment when the dust settles and the silence sets in—a moment of quiet devastation where the damage of flooding is still fresh and the weight of recovery feels overwhelming. For her Bachelor of Fine Arts Graduate Exhibition in 2024, Lize is exhibiting a collection of works titled Resilient Landscape and Memento mori.
Resilient Landscape is a pair of ceramic blankets with a knitted texture, pierced by barbed wire and resting on metal frames. The pair sit damaged and no longer functional. This imagery speaks to the experience of Australian farmers, who constantly battle extreme weather conditions in rural areas. Disasters, like flooding, can obliterate their crops, homes, and livelihoods in an instant.
Though the media may move on, the harsh reality persists long after—the work of rebuilding, the grief, and the sense of isolation that is becoming increasingly familiar due to climate crisis effects. Memento mori, death is inevitable, the grief felt in response to it is a universal connection.
Lize Myburgh is an emerging, contemporary ceramic and mixed media artist born in South Africa, now living and working respectfully on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people of the eastern Kulin Nation in Naarm, Victoria. Myburgh’s practice is engaged with forms of hand building techniques which allows for her instinctively response to the potential of clay.
Her mixed-media elements of barbed wire and discarded domestic objects are re-contextualized when combined with the ceramic process such as assemblage, glazing and firing. An experimental approach to found material, clay materiality and the ceramic process expand the conceptual potential of her work. Myburgh researches cultural and political issues and uses this emotional knowledge to ground her sculptural ceramics. Her artwork encourages an emotion response and discussion with the audience/viewer.
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Lize Myburgh, ‘Resilient Landscape’, 2024, barbed wire, Keane Toast clay, glaze and fired metal Chair frames.