Patterns of Identity Exhibition

A Ceramics + Exhibition by Jason Eisen of v'Mordechai Ceramics & Josemarie Nyagah. 

Featuring Works by John Bauer, Clare Menck, and Marcelino Manhula

🗓 May 29 – June 3, 2025 

📍 1895 Gallery, 52 Burg Street, Cape Town 

🎉 Opening Night: May 29, 5–8 PM 

RSVP: +27 60 498 3763 OR via our Facebook Event, or for non-FB users, here.

Discovering Self Through Porcelain, Photo, Mosaic, & Paint

Patterns of Identity is a dialogue between artists, their materials, their roots, and the journeys that have shaped them. Through the ancient yet innovative nerikomi technique alongside complementary artistic expressions in paint and mosaic, this collaborative exhibition weaves together heritage and personal transformation.

Meet the Artists

Josemarie Nyagah brings her multifaceted perspective as a Kenyan ceramicist, photographer, and painter to create works that balance profound stillness with vibrant patterns. Her pieces resonate as artifacts from an inner landscape: dreamlike, tender, and deeply connected to the earth.

A multi-disciplinary artist with a BA in Peace and Conflict Resolution and Honours in Cinematography, Nyagah employs artistic mediums as tools for shifting perceptions and crafting inclusive transformation. Her practice stems from a deep curiosity about human experience and our planetary connections. While photography has been her primary storytelling medium—spanning portrait, documentary, self-expression, and landscapes—her ceramic work represents an evolution into tactile storytelling that engages multiple senses.

Nyagah's photographic work has been exhibited and sold in galleries across the Netherlands, South Africa, and Italy. Her ceramics, influenced by her visual storytelling background, create a unique dialogue between image and form, memory and material. Through her residency with John Bauer, she has expanded her technical vocabulary to include nerikome, introducing new patterns to her exploration of emotion and narrative through clay.

Jason Eisen of V'Mordechai Ceramics balances and integrates his life as a serial entrepreneur and community builder into his ceramic works. Originally from Boston, Massachusetts but based in Kenya for more than a decade, his richly textured and patterned works capture the energy of creating and building, using patterns to explore identity. The energy of the texturing process contrasted with the fragility of the material reflects the balancing acts of life, responsibility, and creation. 

Jason is a highly excitable creator with past explorations in business, community, technology, public art, trust, and ceramics. His business ventures include efforts to remake online trust in a more human way, and to bring about a decentralized finance revolution.  He’s an inventor with two software patents to his name, a co-author of one book on civil rights, the holder of a 2008 Olympic Gold Medal, and the co-author of various technical papers on digital trust, decentralized finance. He co-instigated the artstorm.nft project in Nairobi, Kenya in 2022 to transform brown public spaces into green, art spaces. He holds a Bachelors of Arts in International Relations with a Minor in Applied Physics. His ceramic explorations blend all of these experiences.

John Bauer, the renowned Cape Town ceramicist and host of the evening, presents his signature tile mosaics. Bauer's work is celebrated for its textural complexity and technical mastery, creating abstract landscapes that bridge the gap between functional ceramics and fine art. His distinctive approach to surface treatment has influenced a generation of ceramic artists in South Africa and beyond.

John Bauer is a ceramicist with work in two national museums, who exhibits widely both locally and abroad. He is the winner of the CSA Corobrik National Ceramic Biennial Premiere Award 2022.

John’s unique neurology creates fertile ground for innovation and collaboration. He redefines the boundaries and possibilities of porcelain, like reverse-engineering a Tsung Dynasty technology, or inventing a printing technology on porcelain, which he coined "dioroid", which works with a responsive emulsion infused in the body of clay to capture images of ambient objects.

Each tile panel is made up of unrepeatable matchbox-sized tiles that collectively make a treasure trove of cultural and natural artifacts, stories and emotion. He has created a “Rubbing Route” where people can touch his public installations, and make their own artwork by putting paper or foil over the tiles and transferring the image by rubbing it.

Clare Menck’s delicate paintings offer ethereal counterpoints to the ceramic works in this exhibition. Her masterful brushwork and nuanced color palette create contemplative compositions that resonate with emotional depth, adding a vital perspective to our exploration of identity.

Born in Durban in 1969, Menck studied at Stellenbosch University (BA Fine Arts, 1990; MA Fine Arts, 1996), UCT's Michaelis School of Fine Art (Advanced Diploma, 1991), and the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Dresden (1998). Her intimate oil paintings function as visual diaries—featuring self-portraits alongside family, friends, and her dogs—transcending mere documentation to become meditations on balancing creative practice with domestic life. Her figures exist in dialogue with their environments, creating psychological spaces that invite contemplation.

Menck's contributions to South African art were celebrated in the national traveling retrospective Clare Menck: Hidden Life – Twenty Years of Painting (1990-2010). She continues to exhibit extensively both nationally and internationally.

Marcelino Manhula's striking mosaics create a dynamic visual dialogue with John Bauer's ceramic tile works. His architectural approach combines bold patterning with meticulous craftsmanship, speaking eloquently to cultural heritage and contemporary urban experience while adding crucial textural dimension to our exploration of pattern as narrative.

Born in Maputo, Mozambique in 1986, Manhula studied painting and textile design at the Visual Art School in Maputo before participating in an international Eco Leadership exchange program in 2005. Upon returning home, he balanced his creative practice with humanitarian work for organizations including the World Food Program while developing his independent project "Green Spaces."

Drawn to South Africa in 2009, Manhula discovered his affinity for mosaic art in Cape Town, completing a three-year program in architectural mosaic at the Spier Art Academy. He has since created significant commissioned works for Spier and meticulous mosaic interpretations for exhibitions worldwide. His work represents a fascinating intersection of Mozambican heritage, South African influence, and contemporary global practice.

Celebrating Jo and Jason’s Residency with John Bauer 

During their time in Cape Town, Josemarie and Jason embarked on sensory journeys through tidal pools, mountain paths, local galleries, and hidden second-hand shops. They collected tangible and intangible fragments that now live embedded within their work. Under Bauer's guidance, they:

• Fired work in wood-burning rocket kilns, embracing the unpredictable beauty of flame and ash

• Encased their porcelain in abalone shells during firing to naturally glaze the pots

• Mastered advanced Nerikomi techniques, creating intricate patterns reminiscent of geological formations

• Participated in the communal experience of building and firing kilns in John's garden

• Developed new approaches to texture and surface treatment 

• Collaborated with fellow exhibiting artists Clare Menck and Marcelino Manhual, creating unexpected artistic dialogues

This exhibition is a culmination of those experiences, building on their existing ceramic practice in Kenya under the tutelage of Waithera Chege. They are thrilled and honoured to include some of the incredible artists they’ve met along the way in their exhibition.

The Exhibition: What Visitors Will Experience

Visitors to Patterns of Identity will encounter a rich artistic conversation across mediums:

• Bold, patterned Nerikomi vessels revealing cross-sections reminiscent of geological strata and emotional landscapes.

• Accompanying photos and paintings by Josemarie Nyagah

• Surfaces that reward close inspection, shifting between ceramic, shell, and memory

• Pieces that function as both functional vessels and emotional artifacts

This carefully curated exhibition creates a sensory journey where different artistic voices speak to common themes of identity, memory, and material transformation. John Bauer's architectural tile mosaics that celebrate the patterns we walk past daily. Clare Menck's ethereal paintings that capture fleeting emotional states. Marcelino's vibrant mosaic portraits that offer a counterpoint to the ceramics and paintings. 

Exhibition Details

📍 Exhibition runs May 29 – June 3, 2025 1895 Gallery, 52 Burg Street, Cape Town

🎉 Opening Night: May 29, 5:00 – 8:00 PM

• All five artists in attendance for informal conversation

• Light refreshments provided

• RSVP: +27 60 498 3763 OR via our Facebook Event, or for non-FB users, here.

Pre-Exhibition Nerikomi Workshop: Sharing the Craft

As part of their residency, Josemarie and Jason will host two hands-on pre-exhibition ceramics workshops on May 22 at Blank_ Studio, 8 Komejkie Road in Fish Hoek. 

Participants will explore:

• The fundamentals of nerikome—the Japanese technique of layering colored clays to create intricate patterns

• Methods for infusing personal narrative into ceramic forms

• Meditative approaches to repetition and pattern-making

• Techniques for developing signature textures that speak to individual experience

Workshop participants will depart not only with uniquely personal ceramic pieces but also with new tools for listening to and expressing through clay.

Sign up for the workshops here:

1.5-Hour Morning Workshop - 10AM -11:30AM 

2.5-Hour Afternoon Workshop - 5:30PM - 8:00PM

For inquiries about the exhibition or artists, contact the gallery at info@1895gallery.co.za or john@johnbauerart.com