Spotlight on Alice Finch

Alice Finch

These figurative ceramic pieces and paintings are expressing the complicated relationship between women and the beauty industry. The ropes made of flax are meant to represent a woman’s hair plaited and then utalized by it’s time consuming nature, to bind and restrain the woman from persuing more productive activities.

I found this old fashioned method of advertising with fear still being utalised by cosmetic and fashion companies. The continued pressure for women to perform is cemented in the cultural fibre by increasing the importance of “engineered beauty” and ridiculing public female figures for not attaining the “standard” demanded by the Industry.

“A lie told often enough becomes the truth” Lenin.

This dehumanising of a women’s body into public property has bound the everyday women into a constant battle to maintain a “beauty ideal” or she has failed as a women.

“Men look at women .Women watch themselves being looked at( in modern media)”Critic John Berger.
The option is to opt into the beauty motived crowd or face continuous alienation from the social norm thus creating a perpetual cycle of fear and undermined confidencein the female populace. Although gender roles set by media stereotypes are equally damaging to me , I felt there was a stronger visual to be explored with focusing on female themes.

Spotlight on Esther McLaughlin

Esther Mclaughlin

Half Cooked
My work is about capturing and highlighting the beauty of the last moments of an animal’s life before decay begins. The resin holds the artefacts in a moment, suspended amongst dust particles, unchangeable by time.
The title however, reflects where I feel my work stands at this current time; an exciting and fruitful idea, arrived just a little too late in the day for full realisation.

Spotlight on Joshua Devenish

Joshua Devenish 

The natural environment and the use of natural found wood is the main driving force behind my work. Using materials such as bark, bog oak and rotten branches to create something beautiful to be appreciated instead of overlooked. I aim to make people look deeper into nature and see it for what it really is, looking beyond the surface to discover
how exiting even the most mundane of materials can be. My work shows the relationship between man and nature, how nature is changed over time through a series of interventions both natural and man made. Revealing the unseen I hope to understand this history of interventions to then add my own, using geometric shapes and order amongst the natural forms. Resembling mans influence on the
environment to create a simplistic style that abstracts and enhances the material.

Spotlight on Anne Blades

Anne Blades

My main interest is in nature and in particular trees; they are the major influence and starting point of my work. I want to capture the invisible essence of trees, the spirit. To achieve this I have been working with the grain of the wood, as this, along with all its knots tells part of the life story of each individual tree. I have burnt into the wood and then sandblasted the black back, which emphasises the colours. In some cases I have burnt right through the wood to allow a sense of what is going on below the surface.

Spotlight on Lucy Hubbard

Lucy Hubbard

My work takes inspiration from life around me, family history and times that have
passed. Using postcards, photographs and family documents as references in my
work, gives me a personal connection with the things I am making.

Narrative is also a big part of my work, allowing a small insight into the past through
the words of someone else.

I have experimented with layering in a mixed media approach to achieve the
portrayal of a memory. This has developed into work using Perspex as the main
material and printing onto this to create a translucent image.

This work demonstrates life, and appreciating the small things, a thinking taken from
family documents as well as post-war slogans.

Spotlight on Emma Hughes

Emma Hughes

Earth geography has always been an interest of mine.

Within this, I have focused on crystals and stalactite/stalagmites to inspire my glass ring collection, as I am intrigued by the angular qualities and triangular structures.

I sculpt my rings in jewellers wax, and then create plaster moulds from these. The wax is then melted out of the mould and replaced with glass. I appreciate glass as a medium, as it is unpredictable how the colour will flow inside the mould. This to me also relates to lava flowing beneath the earth’s surface.

Cracking each mould open is like a surprise present.

Spotlight on Nik Burns

Nik Burns

I draw my inspiration from a passion for the fantastical.

The work that I create has an element of mystery, it is my intention for the viewer to be drawn in by the work and ask the questions what and why?

These small scale sculptural pieces are informed by my long held love of mysterious ship wrecks, a love which has fascinated me since childhood.  What I achieve in my work is the illusion of an organic occurrence to a man-made form, creating a ‘life history’. The desire to create forms like this stems from my interest in fantasy and science fiction genres in particular the work of HG Wells and JRR Tolkien.

These pieces were formed from sections of copper sheet which were then welded together. The surfaces are treated using chemical processes, giving a textured patina. The surfaces are endlessly varied as the processes involved allows for little intervention once it has begun. 

Spotlight on Anna Blair

Anna Blair

Nature is a constant source of inspiration for me and a strong influence on my work. It never fails to provide new, interesting and captivating subject matter. For this project I have become quite fascinated with lichen, the delicate subtle qualities which usually go unnoticed have really captured my attention. Also the contrast between this delicacy and the structural, elegant, linear qualities of bamboo is something I have tried to capture within my work.

My lighting pieces are made from Lutradur, a heat modifiable material, I have combined this with organza, shocked silk and satin fabrics to add tone and subtle difference in texture.