Jerwood Makers Open is an exhibition of new commissions by five emerging makers working at the forefront of applied art will open at Jerwood Space in London. Jerwood Makers Open will bring together new works created by Nao Matsunaga, James Rigler, William Shannon, Louis Thompson and Silvia Weidenbach. The organisation has also announced the shortlist for their prestigious drawing prize (see Below)
Leading with their imaginations rather than responding to a set brief, these makers will create ambitious new works in ceramics, design, glass, jewellery and mixed materials and will play with both scale and their chosen materials. Each maker has been awarded £7,500 to create these works.
Shonagh Manson, Director of the Jerwood Charitable Foundation, which runs Jerwood Visual Arts and Jerwood Makers Open, commented: “There are number of big questions and issues that are likely to engage the applied arts sector in coming years. Within this exhibition alone are new works which engage with a range of those challenges; with localism and production, with digital design and the concept of uniqueness, and with the potential of the hand-made, the abstract and the sculptural in craft.”
Nao Matsunaga’s approach to making is through seeing and doing: coiling and applying texture to clay surfaces, carving and assembling wood, or drawing and painting on paper. For the exhibition he will create larger-scale works than he has previously made: two freestanding ceramic sculptures that celebrate his view that extremes of scale are often what make a piece of work special or remarkable.
Ceramic artist James Rigler is fascinated by the hierarchy of objects and by what distinguishes something ordinary from something extraordinary. For Jerwood Makers Open, he will create three monuments – an obelisk, a statue and an archway – undermining these grand structures by creating them with everyday materials such as fabric, wood, paint and metal.
Fascinated by how and where things are made, William Shannon has designed a 5x6ft pottery workshop, complete with a fictional potter and a working pottery kiln that can produce real pottery ware from locally sourced London clay. This is the last in a series of five works where Shannon starts by creating a fictional tradesman – in this case, a potter – before developing a place of work for the character by designing and building the architecture and tools to support their trade.
Glass artist Louis Thompson’s work is concerned with ideas of repetition, sequence and multiples, inspired by his long-term fascination with the idea of collections and the aesthetics of medical and scientific apparatus. His commission for Jerwood Makers Open is a series of blown glass forms created to challenge and tease the viewer, exploring themes of material quality, composition, scale, collections, distortion and ambiguity.
Silvia Weidenbach is a jewellery artist who combines traditional gold-and-silversmithing skills like enamelling and stone cutting with contemporary technologies such as 3D printing and her fascination and experimentation with the decomposition and deformation of materials. For this exhibition she will craft three chunky neckpieces, using objects she has collected or created as a starting point.
These five artists were selected for Jerwood Makers Open from over 200 UK-wide 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.
The 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
Meanwhile the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2012 the largest and longest running annual open exhibition for drawing in the UK. Judged by an independent panel of selectors has announced its shortlist for 2012. Selected by Stephen Coppel, Curator of the Modern Collection, Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum; Kate Macfarlane, Co-Director of The Drawing Room, London; and Lisa Milroy, Artist and Head of Graduate Painting, Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, the Prize aims to explore and celebrate the diversity, excellence and range of current drawing practice in the UK. As a response to the ever-growing popularity of the competition, and the present financial landscape of the arts,Jerwood Visual Arts (JVA) and Drawing Projects UK are delighted this year to announce an increase in the total prize fund, from £11,000 to £17,000, a rise of over 50%.
From its beginning, the Jerwood Drawing Prize has championed the breadth of contemporary drawing in the UK. The 2011 exhibition displayed diverse interpretations of drawing and included video installation, collage and embroidery. The First Prize, awarded to Gary Lawrence for his detailed ballpoint pen drawing, Homage to Anonymous, 2011, acknowledges the traditional medium of draughtsmanship.
From a submission of almost 3,000 entries, the selectors have brought together an exhibition of 78 works from 73 artists. The shortlist includes established artists as well as relative newcomers and students fresh from art college. The selected works will be exhibited at JVA at Jerwood Space, London from 12 September – 28 October 2012, and then tour to venues across the UK including the new Jerwood Gallery, Hastings and mac, Birmingham.
The prizes, which will be awarded to the winning artists at a ceremony on Tuesday 11 September 2012, are a first prize of £8,000, second prize of £5,000 and two student awards of £2,000 each. The prizes, which will be awarded to the winning artists at a ceremony on Tuesday 11 September 2012, are a first prize of £8,000, second prize of £5,000 and two student awards of £2,000 each. The artists short-listed for the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2012 are:
Katie Aggett • Judith Alder • Linda Antalova • Aglae Bassens • Meghana Bisineer • Matthew Burrows • Malina Busch • Jane Bustin • Elizabeth Butterworth • Heeseung Choi • Alexander Costello • Toni Davey • Jeffrey Dennis • Jane Dixon • Paul Eachus • Mark Evans • Marisa Futernick • Matteo Fuzzi • Richard Galloway • Stefan Gant • Pippa Gatty • Albert Geere • Karolina Glusiec • Margarita Gluzberg • Thomas Gosebruch • Beatrice Haines • Susie Hamilton • Tom Hammick • Jane Harris • Oona Hassim • Greg Hayman • Jefford Horrigan • Joanne Hummel-Newell • Abigail Hunt • Robin Jones • Kerstin Kartscher • Kai Kim • Min Kim • Rebecca Kunzi • Nadine Mahoney • Sam Mould • Kyounghee • Nengi Omuku • Simon Parish • Sarah Pettitt • Kasper Pincis • Kathy Prendergast • Carl Randall • Howard Read • Frances Richardson • Ishai Rimmer • Fiona Robinson • Daniela Sarigu • Katy Shepherd • Ruth Simons • Simson & Volley • Eiko Soga • Bada Song • Sarah Spackman • Jennifer Steele • Maaike Anne • Rebecca Swindell • Eleanor Taylor • Shelley Theodore • Amikam Toren • Felicity Truscott • Andrew Vass • Julia Vogl • Sarah Kate Wilson • Ching Wong • Tanya Wood • William Wright • Aishan Yu