Embracing Technology

Introduction by Angela O'Kelly, Curator

This year’s CRAFT strand looks to new directions and dialogues in craft. Craft artists working with cutting-edge technology and materials, conceptual craft and an inclusive, interactive exhibition are some of the highlights of this year’s programme.

The National Craft Gallery Two showcases the work of fourteen makers who are Embracing Technology. These makers push the boundaries of their craft through the inventive use of materials and technology. Combining hand-crafting with new technologies like laser-cutting, water jet cutting, rapid prototyping, motion capturing, textiles set in concrete, interactive magnetic wall coverings and site-specific textiles for walls and windows, these makers expand the potential of craft and challenge our perceptions with new ways of making dynamic forms.

Jo Angell
Jo Angell’s work is inspired by nature, combining hand-crafting with new technologies. For her canopies she observed nature on a microscopic scale. Diatoms - single-celled structures encased in two-sided silica which are highly ornate - provided the perfect inspiration both for the structure and for laser-cutting patterns. Laser-cutting enables Jo to experiment with the different light-diffusing effects achieved by everything from the tiniest holes to larger, bolder shapes. Her canopies offer protection from the sun, yet retain an aura of a changeable, magical light. Each design can be customised to suit the size and material she uses.

Katie Bunnell
As a practitioner-researcher and leader of the 3D digital production research cluster at University College Falmouth, Katie Bunnell has a fundamental urge to interrogate digital technologies using an open and experimental approach. She aims to develop new production methods that integrate digital technologies with other making processes in ways that will enable craft practice to enter new territory, developing new aesthetic qualities, new forms and surfaces and new ways of making things that exploit the communication and networking capabilities of digital data.  

Vanessa Cutler
Vanessa Cutler employs the machine-like qualities of abrasive waterjet to produce work at once solid and fragile. The forms in her work are derived from geometry, architecture and the sensitivity of the material itself, while the ribbon-like qualities of glass engage the viewer. Cutler enjoys building structures that combine material and process to test the strength and fragility of glass and explore the boundaries of the material.

Tavs Jørgensen
In recent years, Tavs Jørgensen’s practice has focused on the creative use of digital development tools. He believes that, in order for the creative practitioner to remain a current and relevant part of contemporary culture, it is vital to explore and utilize these new methods. However, it also takes intimate knowledge of materials and making processes to realise the full creative potential of IT tools. Accordingly, many of his projects explore the potential of merging traditional making skills with new technologies such as rapid prototyping, digitizing, motion capture and CNC milling.

Rachel Kelly
Rachel Kelly’s Interactive Wallpaper Studio has an international reputation for innovative and interactive wallpaper designs. Rachel produces wall coverings ranging from laser and CAD-cut decorative wall and glass stickers to hand screenprinted wallpaper. She specialises in both traditional and innovative print processes, often combining hand silkscreen with CAD and digital printing with laser technology. She has many high-profile clients including the BBC, the Arts Council and the NHS, and this year was nominated for a Grand Designs Award for her print designs for Habitat UK Ltd.

Jenny Leary
Jenny Leary is a textile designer whose work investigates the use of magnetic materials including steel fibres, ferrite rubber, magnetic films, neodymium magnets and ultrafine iron powder. She blends these technical ingredients with traditional textile materials, and draws on processes such as embroidery and laser-cutting to invent new recipes for surface design. Her work, which sits comfortably both in artistic and scientific contexts, questions the boundaries between engineering and craft. Whether creating magnetic materials for wall coverings, hand-bound books, or apparel, Jenny seeks out uncanny surface qualities that are bound to challenge our senses.

Aoife Ludlow
Aoife Ludlow’s work explores the concept of the journey and the ways in which we navigate through space, from maps and motorway lights to the near-meditative state of a long-distance runner. While grounded in a love of materials and tactility, her recent work combines technology and tradition, art and craft, using laser-cutting, digital print, animation and film alongside traditional textile techniques. A designer for Tactility Factory and co-director of design consultancy We Like Soup, she is based in Belfast.

Rachel McKnight
Rachel McKnight produces necklaces, bangles, earrings and rings to form quirky creations in plastics and rubber. The excitement of sourcing and experimenting with new materials inspires her to produce original and innovative jewellery. Working with plastics enables her to pursue her interest in transparency and opaque colour. In the last two years she has embraced new technology and with the help of laser-cutting is developing work with more intricate designs, such as the lace pattern used in some of her pieces. The idea of combining a man-made, industrial product with a delicate and traditional pattern inspires her new work. She is based in Belfast.

Justin Marshall
Justin Marshall is a practising maker and researcher based at University College Falmouth. His work on ceramic bowls was developed at Bath Spa University Ceramics Department, with support from an AHRC research grant. The project involved investigating a particular piece of 3D CAD software for its creative potential in producing ceramic forms with new surface texture. The textures of the bowls were developed through a process of ‘voxelation’, in which a 3D form is simplified into a series of blocks which make up an approximation of the original form. This process creates unexpected complexity and interference patterns within the complex, curved surface of the bowls.

Lynne Murray
Lynne Murray’s work operates at the fractured junction where the directness of the hand drawn and the dominance of computerized design collide. Exploring new technologies, she celebrates these tensions by translating impulsive, drawn designs into refined, digital jewellery. Her research into the manipulation of computer-generated design, in partnership with handmade interventions, creates visually-engaging and technically-challenging forms of jewellery. By exploiting the glitches between these opposing processes, the work starts to function and the journey can begin.

Liz Nilsson
Liz Nilsson is an interdisciplinary textile artist. Her work Constructed Remembrance investigates memory and our ability to memorise experiences. Weaving together used and new fabrics, the multi-layered nature of her work represents repetition, recall and habit and refers to the way in which memories are formed. Shadows add a transient layer and symbolise memory, enabling the viewer to experience the actual work and its memory, the concrete and the shadow, simultaneously.

CJ O’Neill
Inspired by memories and everyday ceramics, CJ O’Neill creates a visual language of silhouettes. Re-interpreting existing objects, adding a new layer of pattern over the old, she aims to embed a new story, to provoke conversation and inspire new ways of seeing objects. Though she uses industrial production processes, she aligns herself more closely to the individual craftsman and is interested in the balance between the handmade and the industrially produced. Punching old, manufactured, everyday objects with a 'newness' that refers to current mass production, O’Neill places these old objects in the spotlight and asks how their value has changed with the imposition of a new narrative.

Jill Phillips
Jill Phillips is an award-winning, multi-disciplinary designer of bespoke furniture, textiles and interiors. Her work combines old and new, antique and modern, in unique and exciting ways. Her elegantly-deviant pieces encourage the observer to construct their own visual experience. Nothing is as it seems. Subtlety is key. Drawing on aspects of cognitive science, these pieces persuade the brain and eye to connect, and re-connect, stimulating a progression of engagements that allow new forms to emerge.

Tactility Factory
In the true spirit of invention, Tactility Factory unites expertise from architecture and textiles to bring tactility into the built environment. Architect Ruth Morrow and textile designer Trish Belford combine the hard properties of concrete with the softness of textiles by designing innovative processes, using patented technology, to deliver beautiful and sensually-engaging surfaces. Though created using leading-edge technologies, each surface finish has a unique, hand-crafted, antique feel; a testament to the fact that ornament isn’t crime.
 


Exhibition Information

7 August - 20 October

Tuesday - Saturday 10am-5pm
Open Mondays during the Festival

National Craft Gallery, Castle Yard

 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Tours
Tours of the exhibitions will take place at 11am daily in National Craft Galleries.

Curator Talk
On Sunday 8 August, at 2pm, Craft curator Angela O’Kelly and the artists will give a talk on the exhibitions. Admission free.

Children’s Craft Workshops
Free children’s craft workshops will take place on Tuesday 10 August, Wednesday 11 and Thursday 12 August in the National Craft Gallery from 2 to 4pm. These workshops will introduce children to the materials and techniques used in the exhibitions and explore jewellery, textiles and new technologies. Booking essential. Contact: +353 (0)56 779 6151.

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