Jerwood Makers Open

An exhibition at the Jerwood Space, in London, shows the works of the young makers awarded this year at the Jerwood Makers Open, designed to support UK-based early career practitioners.

The value of solidity

Riva1920 creates solid wood furniture using certified or reclaimed materials, combining sustainability, high-quality craftsmanship, and timeless design. An Italian excellence focused on durability, transparency, and authenticity.

Sponsored content

Making has become increasingly fashionable of late. In a globalised economy in which most of us don’t make and don’t know where, or how, the things around us are made, the desire to get our hands dirty is palpable.

Yet for all the rhetoric about making from economists and politicians alike, actual investment is lacking. How are we going to ensure a new generation of makers if they haven’t got the education or resources necessary to create objects and communicate their value?

This absence of support is what makes initiatives like the Jerwood Makers Open so valuable. Launched in 2010, the annual award is designed to support UK-based early career practitioners. As a sign of both its value and the widespread interest in making-based creativity, this year over 240 applicants competed for the £7,500 bursary. The winners – FleaFollyArchitects, Hitomi Hosono, Shelley James, Matthew Raw and Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen – are currently show the fruits of their labour in an exhibition at the Jerwood Space in London.

Grouped together in the gallery’s first room is the work of the two ceramicists selected, Hisono and Raw. Raw, an RCA graduate, has created a life-size ceramic-tiled façade of an imaginary pub called The Shifting Spirit. With its hand-rolled tiles and wonky lettering, this is an identifiably handmade architectural surface; yet it isn’t an exercise in craft, but social commentary. Raw sees the British pub as a barometer of societal change, specifically of the relentless march of gentrification which is contributing to the closure, on average, of nearly thirty pubs each week in the UK. This fictional façade is intended to provoke dialogue about gentrification’s impact and the role we play in it.

At the other end of the room is Hosono’s Colouring and Carving – Tropical Island Project. Like Raw, the Japanese-born ceramicist spent time at the RCA, but her work is radically different in both scale and style. The family of seven vessels are based on “sprigs”, or rather molded clay details added to ceramic surfaces, which she has transformed from a decorative into a structural role, a slow and skilled work made even more difficult by her introduction of colour into the process. The intricate works recall both tropical foliage and William Morris-style fabrics, and are testimony to the possibilities of experimentation and endurance in making.

The spectacle of skill continues with James’ Elemental Symmetries. Hidden behind a curtained in a darkened room is a single black plinth, on which sit five, individually lit, geometric glass forms exuding a mystical aura. In conjunction with a crystallographer, glassblower and other collaborators, James has created a series of glassworks in Platonic forms, including a dodecahedron and icosahedron. Inside, the works are even more complex, containing layers of precision-engineered patterns that challenge both glass-making techniques and our own ideas of perception and form.

Shown in the gallery’s largest space, the final two projects couldn’t be more different. Occupying the middle is The Modern Prometheus, a four metre high scale model from FleaFollyArchitects, or Thomas Hillier and Pascal Bronne, two Bartlett-trained architects who started working together in 2012. Like Raw, FleaFollyArchitects have used architectural fiction as a medium for critical commentary. Concerned about issues of privacy and identity in a digital age, they have created a ‘technological Tower of Babel’, a dystopian take on the server architecture being built in the Artic. Combining digital manufacture with traditional techniques, the object is undeniably crafted. However the making involved seems secondary to the message, which is understandable given the architect’s interest in speculative work, but surprising here.

Giving More to Gain More, also appears outside of the Jerwood’s usual remit. Since graduating from the RCA’s MA Design Interactions in 2008, Cohen and Van Balen have adopted an art-based approach to design, creating objects that often explore questions about contemporary manufacture. Specifically, this trio of works relate to the language of our globalized production system, using phrases of pidgin English from their correspondence with Chinese electronics suppliers, such as It’s so Brightness and We Have to Work Hard and Work with our Heart. The duo has used aluminium, LED strips and other materials from these same suppliers and turned them into large light-based sculptures, their words dissolving in and out of abstraction.

Jerwood makers — Shelley James, Elemental Symmetries (detail), 2014. Hot glass, print, steel and brass, dimensions variable. Photo by thisistomorrow

I’m not sure what to make of this year’s exhibition. The risk taking evident in the boundary-pushing selection is laudable, and I think that the craft world should respond to developments in other areas, such as critical design and architecture, even if the emphasis on works notable for their speculative qualities rather than the skill involved didn’t always feel right in this context. Nevertheless, this year’s award has resulted in some engaging, and occasionally outstanding, work that only confirms the need for the support that awards like the Jerwood Maker Open provide.

01 / 06

FleaFollyArchitects, The Modern Prometheus, 2014. Mixed media, laser cut timber, brass, dimensions variable. Photo by thisistomorrow

Hitomi Hosono, Colouring and Carving – Tropical Island Project, 2014. Porcelain, dimensions variable. Photo by thisistomorrow

Hitomi Hosono, Colouring and Carving – Tropical Island Project, 2014. Porcelain, dimensions variable. Photo by thisistomorrow

Matthew Raw, The Shifting Spirit (detail), 2014. Ceramic tiles, dimensions variable. Photo by thisistomorrow

Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen, Giving More to Gain More series, 2014. Aluminium and electronics, dimensions variable. Photo by thisistomorrow

Shelley James, Elemental Symmetries, 2014. Hot glass, print, steel and brass, dimensions variable. Photo by thisistomorrow

until August 31, 2014
Jerwood Makers Open
Jerwoos Space
171 Union Street, Bankside | London

Stitching Wood: Lissoni’s Latest Creation

Part of Listone Giordano’s Natural Genius collection, Nui is a series inspired by an ancient Japanese technique.

Sponsored content

Jerwood Makers Open

An exhibition at the Jerwood Space, in London, shows the works of the young makers awarded this year at the Jerwood Makers Open, designed to support UK-based early career practitioners.

The value of solidity

Stitching Wood: Lissoni’s Latest Creation

Latest on Design

Latest on Domus