Proustian moments: Hylton Nel paints his personal history on plates

Hylton Nel does not keep a diary. ‘God, I wish that I was more disciplined so I could keep one,’ he says. Instead, the 82-year-old South African artist-potter can rely on his ceramics as an aide-mémoire. ‘When I see the plate, I remember the time I made it, how it was and how I felt.’ A Proustian moment, except it’s the plate bringing the past into the present, rather than the madeleine served upon it.

The artist has recently celebrated the opening of his retrospective at Charleston House in East Sussex: This plate is what I have to say. It brings together more than 200 pieces curated by Nel’s collaborator Kim Jones, the British fashion designer and artistic director of Fendi. The exhibition is a homecoming of sorts for Nel. Raised in South Africa, he studied fine art in Belgium in the 60s before moving to England, where he lived and worked until returning to South Africa in the 70s. With so much of his life over a 60-year career served up for display, I wonder if it feels revealing. ‘To have an exhibition can be exposing, and very daunting,’ Nel concedes. But he is sure that where he senses memories others will see only patterns. ‘They’re not made with the intention of concealing something,’ he says. ‘They’re simply made at that time and involuntarily carry those messages that I can read.’

What does concern him is whether people find his art unappealing to eat off. All the plates are perfectly functional – he keeps a personal stack at home in his live-in workshop in the small town of Calitzdorp – but many of his fans opt to display them as art. He, somewhat self-deprecatingly, puts this down to the ‘pictures being too strong’ rather than an effort to keep them pristine. ‘If you’re serving food on it then a little flower is sufficient to cheer you up while you’re eating,’ he says. ‘If your food lands on the middle of a picture, I find it not that practical.’ While some, myself included, would be delighted to finish their meal and be surprised by the image of a cheerful erect phallus sitting on an ornate bench (like the one painted by Nel in 2003), it might not appeal to your more conservative dinner guests.

Nel is queer and his art often takes a strong political stance: decrying the homophobia of the Catholic church; cheering for Obama; or quoting gay porn actor Joey Stefano on the exile of queerness in a homophobic society, for example. He doesn’t see his more subversive works as activism, rather a gut reaction to the horrors he sees in the world, and the continuing assault by the Right on hard-won and still-tenuous LGBTQ+ rights. ‘I see the news every day and I think, my God, bloody hell,’ he says. ‘It’s not why I make – I simply make things and that’s what’s on my mind.’

Wisely, Nel keeps strict boundaries on his news consumption. He doesn’t take a newspaper and he eschews the trappings of modern technology. He is deeply distrustful of mobile phones and prefers his books. When he returned to South Africa after living abroad, he got rid of many of them and regretted it. Thus, his extensive reference library escaped the cull of his recent downsize following the death of his partner six years ago. ‘I’ve got a mountain of books on the shelves,’ he says. ‘They’re not sorted, but it makes me happy to see.’

The new house is more remote. ‘That solitude is nice,’ he says. ‘I’m not bothered by people while I work.’ Surrounding him instead, are the results of his passion for collecting antique ceramics and art. He admires English ceramics, collecting examples of transfer printing and Wedgwood from the 1750s, and draws much inspiration from much older slipware ceramics from across Ancient Greece, Rome, China, Japan, and the Middle East. “You feel yourself reaching out to a long line of making,” he says. “The ceramic techniques, the ways of doing things, the ways that travelled.”

In Nel’s artistic process, ‘the plate comes first’. He finds it is the perfect canvas for painting onto directly. He still uses a low-temperature glaze recipe given to him in the 1970s, originally from the 1930s potter Dora Billington. He makes each plate on a kick wheel using a hump mould and local South African clay. Nel finds the elemental nature of pottery deeply engaging. ‘Rocks disintegrate and become clay, then you take it, add water and shape it, and expose it to heat,’ he says. ‘It turns back into a kind of stone that can last for a very long time.’ But the elements also play havoc with his process. ‘We're having a lot of rain at the moment and that makes too much moisture in the atmosphere,’ he bemoans. ‘Then the plate won't come free or is just a disaster because they’re floppy when I get them off.’ Even after 60 years of making, the medium still provides its challenges.

The longevity that pottery affords intrigues him, but he has been known to destroy his own work. ‘When you’ve just made things, you’re so emotionally tied up with them,’ he says. ‘I’ve learned not to react extremely when opening the kiln. If I’m going to break something, it’s after I’ve looked at it for a long time.’ Nel’s pieces are windows to his personal past, just as pottery shards dug up by archeologists are portals to the history of humanity – the thousands of years of culture, trade and craft that ceramics hold. It amuses him to think of what future historians may make of his work. ‘I suppose if we haven’t burnt up the planet before then, people will dig it up and come to whatever conclusions they come to.’

'Hylton Nel: This plate is what I have to say’ is at Charleston House, 25 March – 10 September; charleston.org.uk – Crafts members get 20% off tickets for this, and the Betty Woodman and George Woodman exhibition taking place at the same time, using the offer code CRAFTS20 in the 'Discount/voucher code' box at the online checkout. This offer is valid between 14 June and 12 August.