Stars of the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair

SIX new designers from Manchester School of Art are among just a handful of the UK’s best up and coming creative graduates who have been selected to exhibit in the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair’s Great Northern Graduates showcase, which opens at Old Granada Studios tomorrow.

The designer-makers were selected during their final year degree show by curator and artist Victoria Scholes. A further eight makers from other universities, predominantly in the North, were selected at New Designers in London and will join them to showcase the sharpest edge of craft and design.

This collection of new talent will exhibit alongside over 160 of the UK’s leading designer-makers at this award-winning event which is the largest contemporary craft fair in the North.

Victoria said: “Great Northern Graduates gives a voice to some of the UK’s finest up-and-coming makers and designers. It shows that Manchester School of Art and the other Northern universities are a major contributors to the UK’s world-renowned cultural enterprise.”

“Big ideas”

The work from MMU graduates will include Rosemary Booth’s mesmerising pinpricked sculptural work, painstakingly handcrafted wallpaper by Claire Florey-Hitchcox and fabrics that play with illusion from Swinton-based Josie Cawdry.

Contemporary jewellery from Siobhan Doran celebrates the exquisite qualities of rock and mineral specimens and Megan Ocheduszko explores touch and tactility in order to create jewellery collections made from silicone, sponge and sapele.

Groundbreaking ideas in sustainable design are represented by Felix Bell who, as well as creating the world’s first biodegradeable pen, has redesigned the plastic bottle so that it leaves the factory with a second life as an interlocking construction material for use as shelter for refugees in the developing world.

Victoria Scholes said: “From big ideas to innovative design and beautiful objects these graduates point to a vibrant and successful future for British Craft.”

Leading artists on display

In addition to Great Northern Graduates, GNCCF 2014 will feature a new, specially curated selling exhibition called Ornament. Ornament will showcase the work of seven of the UK’s leading artists, including Manchester School of Art staff and graduates, whose work is highly collected and featured in some of the collections of the North West’s museums and galleries.

The exhibition will focus on the presentation of beautiful collectable objects, the stories of the people who made them and the history of the collections they feature in. With all work from the makers on sale, it will also provide the opportunity for visitors to invest in high-end work to start or add to their own collection.

The work ranges from dramatic figurative wall hangings and framed panels by textile artist Alice Kettle, a Senior Research Fellow at the Manchester School of Art, to nature-inspired multiples in forged metal by Junko Mori. Manchester-born Michael Brennand-Wood, a graduate of the School’s MA Embroidery, will exhibit a selection of his mixed media freestanding and wall-hung pieces that are part sculpture, part textile.

Bob Crooks, one of Britain’s leading glassmakers will showcase a group of new work following on from his recent sell-out show Alchemy. The pieces of Bob’s work chosen to be displayed were curated in collaboration with MMU Special Collections.

From pots to textiles

Ceramicist Kate Malone who is well known for her beautifully-constructed pots, often in complex shapes based on natural forms such as fruit or seeds, will show Porcelain Hearts ‘A Sliced Heart of your Dreams’.

Also exhibiting is artist Caroline Broadhead, who started her career in jewellery. The range of her work has evolved into a wider practice over more than forty years and has seen her working with textile materials leading to her being awarded the Jerwood Prize for Applied Art: Textiles in 1997.

She will be joined by potter Walter Keeler who has been working with clay for over forty years and whose beautifully-made studio pottery pieces bridge the gap between practical domestic pottery and fine-art orientated ceramics.

The Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair runs until Sunday, October 12. For more information, visit www.greatnorthernevents.co.uk, Facebook at www.facebook.com/GNCCF or Twitter @GNCCF