Five commissions announced for Jerwood Makers Open 2012
Following an open call for entries, Jerwood Visual Arts (JVA) today announces the five artists selected to make new works of craft for Jerwood Makers Open 2012. Nao Matsunaga, James Rigler, William Shannon, Louis Thompson and Silvia Weidenbach will each receive a £7,500 commission to realise their proposals, which will then be exhibited as part of the JVA programme at Jerwood Space, London in July 2012 before touring within the UK
Jerwood Makers Open commissions and showcases new work by emerging makers in the applied arts. Artists from across making disciplines, resident in the UK and within 10 years of graduating or setting up their practice, were invited to submit proposals. The five winners were selected from over 200 applications by an independent panel comprising Felicity Aylieff, ceramic artist, James Beighton, Curator at mima, Middlesbrough and Lauren Parker, Head of Contemporary Programmes at the V&A, London.
They comment: "From a very strong field of applicants we feel that these five artists have an energy, a curiosity and a strong sense of inquiry that is vital to today’s practice. We were struck by how this diverse group was connected by a deep sensitivity to the ways in which material - glass, ceramic, enamel, plastics - can be stretched, manipulated, even subverted, to produce extraordinary work. They share an innate understanding of how the nature of their material underpins the ideas they wish to communicate."
The proposals of the five selected makers are linked by their exploration of scale as a way of re-framing the themes and materials with which they work:
Nao Matsunaga creates raw organic forms from clay, often juxtaposed by wooden and canvas elements. Their aesthetic suggests ceremonial and ritualistic connotations which transcend the everyday nature of these materials. For Jerwood Makers Open, Nao proposes to make large objects that will challenge preconceptions of the small, plinth-top scale one usually associates with ceramics. www.naomatsunaga.com
James Rigler works with ceramics and other domestic materials such as wood, vinyl, fabric and paint to explore the idea and the forms of the monument. By harnessing the seemingly contradictory realms of the ordinary and extraordinary, he seeks to recognise the hidden worth and false importance of objects. The commission will allow him to reverse the process of previous work - which employs architectural qualities to give weight to small, everyday objects - and instead make monumental objects that retain an unsettling sense of the domestic and ordinary. www.jamesrigler.co.uk
William Shannon will create the last in a series of five works that propose ways in which local materials and localised manufacture can allow new, lightweight industries to be reintroduced to the city. He has designed a 4ft sq workshop to house a working pottery kiln for a fictional tradesman, which can produce real pottery-ware from locally sourced London clay. The final object will propose questions about how and where our material things are made. www.willshannon.co.uk
Within the visual language of the glass vessel, Louis Thompson is concerned with themes of repetition and sequence, exterior and interior, containment and confinement, glass and solid, perception and illusion. He will use the Jerwood Makers Open commission to explore these themes in blown glass, on an architectural scale. The illusions created by the final work will explore the desire of an audience to touch, whether they are permitted to or not. www.louisthompson.com
Silvia Weidenbach is a jewellery maker who, alongside her conventional work, has been experimenting with non-traditional materials and processes such as decomposition and deformation. In this way she has explored beauty, the precious and the ugly, in the detail and in complexity. Using digital technology she has recently begun visualising symmetrical design ideas for these experimental objects, which she now plans to translate back into real pieces which can be worn. www.silviaweidenbach.com
Jerwood Visual Arts, developed and managed by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation, is committed to supporting and promoting contemporary applied arts practice. Launched in 2010, Jerwood Makers Open creates a space in which to recognise and celebrate the significance of making practice and process within contemporary visual arts. It offers makers at the early stages of their careers an opportunity to develop their creative ideas independently of specific commissioning structures. The first Jerwood Makers Open exhibition launched in London earlier this year and is touring to the Dovecot Studio in Edinburgh and the Naughton Gallery at Queen’s University, Belfast.
The Jerwood Makers Open exhibition will open at JVA at Jerwood Space, London, from 11 July to 26 August 2012, before touring in the UK. More information about the initiative can be found at www.jerwoodvisualarts.org or by following @JerwoodJVA on Twitter.
For more press information, please contact Iliana Taliotis or Chris Baker at Colman Getty on +44 (0)20 7631 2666 or [email protected]
Notes to editors
Jerwood Makers Open is part of Jerwood Visual Arts (JVA), a contemporary gallery programme of awards, exhibitions and events at Jerwood Space, London and on tour nationally. JVA supports and showcases the work of talented emerging artists across the disciplines of drawing, painting, sculpture, applied arts, photography and moving image. It also makes connections and provokes conversations within and across the different disciplines. JVA is a major initiative of the Jerwood Charitable Foundation. For more information visit www.jerwoodvisualarts.org
The Jerwood Charitable Foundation is dedicated to imaginative and responsible revenue funding of the arts, supporting artists to develop and grow at important stages in their careers. They work with artists across art forms, from dance and theatre to literature, music and the visual arts. For more information visit www.jerwoodcharitablefoundation.org
About the Jerwood Makers Open 2012 selection panel:
Felicity Aylieff is a ceramic artist who has for many years been an advocate for blurring the boundaries between art and craft. She has exhibited widely and is best known for her monumental porcelain vessels. She has taught extensively throughout her career, and is currently Senior Tutor at the Royal College of Art.
Lauren Parker is Head of Contemporary Programmes at the Victoria & Albert Museum. In this role she oversees a creative programme of contemporary exhibitions, artist commissions and events. Since joining the V&A she has curated several exhibitions, including the major exhibition China Design Now (2008), Shhh… Sounds in Spaces (2004) and Touch Me: Design and Sensation (2005).
James Beighton is Curator at mima, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, where he is responsible for devising the temporary exhibition programme and for caring for the collections. Prior to mima, he was Curator of the Cleveland Crafts Centre and Middlesbrough Art Gallery, and Exhibition Officer for Craft at City Gallery in Leicester.
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