What is Jewellery? Exhibition opens at Manchester Craft and Design Centre 3 October

Christelle Bileci-Haddow  Mouse fur & silver ring (TMC Alumni 2014)

Expect the unexpected! 

Work made from unorthodox materials, crossing boundaries of fine art/jewellery. A curated selection of pieces made from a diverse array of makers and materials, featuring techniques such as taxidermy, leather, paper, fishing wire, expandable foam, metal, wood, resin and other materials that challenges the notion of wearable jewellery. 

The Manchester College Lecturer Eve Redmond, curates a Jewellery exhibition of international, national, former staff and FdA Jewellery and Applied Arts alumni as part of Manchester’s Free for Arts Festival 

The exhibition runs from 3rd October-12^th October in the Space2 @ Manchester Craft & Design Centre.

Open daily Monday-Saturday 10am-5.30pm  Sunday 11am-5pm

Launch Friday 3^rd October  3.30pm-5.50pm

Check out their Facebook event here

Min-Ji Cho  Rubber glove necklace  

 

Jo Pond  ‘Re-Tin’ & citrine  

Top NW Museums bring stunning craft to Ornament at GNCCF

Propagation Project: Super Jumbo Nigella, Wave, Junk Mori (see below for more details)  

Some of our North West Museums are keen collectors of contemporary craft, and 2014 sees a unique event at Manchester's Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair that tells us something more about the top quality craft that can be found around the region.

Curated by Kelda Savage, ORNAMENT is a selling exhibition of contemporary craft by some of the UK's most eminent makers. It will run alongside the main fair and add something extra special to the mix of craft and design on display.  The show will tell the stories of some the UK's our best artists and makers, and of the North West Museums who have collected their work.


Not only that, there will be the chance to buy additional pieces by these artists - a fantastic opportunity to invest in a unique and remarkable handcrafted object to enrich not only your own life but future generations!

So go along and see mesmerising work by Alice Kettle (collected by the Whitworth); Bob Crooks (MMU Special Collections); Caroline Broadhead (Jo Bloxham); Kate Malone (Blackwell, the Arts and Crafts House); Junko Mori (Touchstones Rochdale), Michael Brennand-Wood (Bluecoat Display Centre) and Walter Keeler (Gallery Oldham)

Great Northern Events is a member of the North West Craft Network

More image details - Propagation Project: Super Jumbo Nigella, Wave.  This is the largest piece of Junko’s work produced to date.  Photo courtesy of Junko Mori and Adrian Sassoon

How can we build the market for high quality contemporary craft in the North West?

Louise Gardiner (Speaker at the NW Craft Network Symposium) -

You Blow Me Away for COLLECT 2012 at The Saatchi Gallery

Key players within the national and North West craft community will come together on October 11 in Manchester for a vibrant symposium.

The Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair will be the host for this important event, and the symposium will be nestled right at the heart of this wonderful craft event in Old Granada Studios.

The participants will be around 50 invited curators, gallery owners, makers, collectors, museums (including many of the North West's most signficant craft venues), policy makers and educators – all people with a major part to play in building the market and their own unique perspective on how it can be done.

Three highly regarded speakers will set the scene

James Beighton, the former curator at MIMA 

Louise Gardiner, internationally renowned textile artist 

Jo Bloxham, Trustee of the Craft Council and an important collector and curator of contemporary Jewellery.
And then the group will go on to collectively and individually explore how we can all help to build the market for collecting of high quality craft.

The event is organised by the North West Craft Network in partnership with the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair

Craft heaven! 9-12 October at the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair

160 makers; 'Ornament' a new selling exhibition by some of the North West's most collectible artists; the Great Northern Graduate showcase of what's new in the craft world, and much, much more. What's not to love about the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair!

Great Northern Events, the brains behind the fair, are part of the North West Craft Network. 

New North West Craft Network member! MMU Special Collections

Cow in a field (After Thomas Bewick's Kyloe Ox). Paul Scott’s Cumbrian Blues, 2007

MMU Special Collections.  Inspiring learning and creativity since 1898.

Top quality craft can be found all over the North West, and our recent North West Craft Network member MMU Special Collections has some real treasures. Here's their invitation to you to go and discover....

Tucked away inside the library of Manchester Metropolitan University, you will find MMU Special Collections. Described by one visitor as “serene and lovely”, our gallery space showcases the breadth of our art and design collections and archives which cover the historic, the modern and the contemporary. Recent exhibitions have featured Art Nouveau objects, children’s book illustrations from the 1960s, and products designed using cutting-edge digital technologies. Our Reading Room provides open access to our book collections, including more than 2,000 Artists’ Books, and our learning space is used to enable hands-on access to material. Our collections and archives continue to grow to reflect current practices and technological developments. The Manchester School of Art Collection includes contemporary craft and product design by makers and designers such as Assa Assuach, Claire Curneen, Patrick Jouin, Junko Mori, Gareth Neal and Jim Partridge. 

Access to MMU Special Collections is free and open to all.    
        

New Generation Gravity Stool, Jólan van der Wiel, 2014

MMU Special Collections, 3^rd Floor, Sir Kenneth Green Library, Manchester Metropolitan University, All Saints Campus, Oxford Road, M15 6BH.

T. 0161 247 6107

E. lib-spec-coll@mmu.ac.uk

www.specialcollections.mmu.ac.uk

@MMUSpecial

Find us on Googlemaps

Full image details:

Cow in a field (After Thomas Bewick's Kyloe Ox). Paul Scott’s Cumbrian Blues, 2007, photograph courtesy of MMU Special Collections, © Paul Scott

New Generation Gravity Stool, Jólan van der Wiel, 2014, Photograph courtesy of Jólan van der Wiel, © Jólan van der Wiel

Craft shines at Asia Triennial Manchester 2014: Swags and Tails at Manchester Craft and Design Centre

Join the lovely people at Manchester Craft and Design Centre to celebrate their new exhibition, Swags and Tails by Kashif Nadim Chaudry, which launches on Saturday 27th September 2-5pm

 

There'll be free refreshments, family friendly activities and acoustic violin with a Bollywood twist.

Chaudry's work is painstakingly crafted, blending his tailoring heritage, personal conflicts with sexuality and faith, and a taste for mischief.  

 

He'll be discussing his work at a special artist's talk during the launch event, and the exhibition is part of Asia Triennial Manchester 2014.

Hope to see you there!

Manchester Craft and Design Centre is part of the North West Craft Network. Click here for more.

After Ford 151 - Blackwell’s Dark Place

10 October - 20 December 2014

It’s Arts & Crafts, but not as we know it. 

As part of The Nuisance of Landscape: Grizedale – The Sequel exhibition, Grizedale Arts have crafted After Ford 151 – Blackwell’s Dark Place upstairs in the beautiful Oliver Thompson Gallery. 

This ambitious installation explores the notion of Arts & Crafts as a resistance movement and its evolution through modernism to become a cornerstone of how we understand the contemporary. 

It presents Grizedale Arts’ own polticised history of design - a brave new world of objects and ideas that serve as a provocative reassessment of the Arts & Crafts legacy.

Blackwell, The Arts & Crafts House 

Lakeland Arts

lakelandarts.org.uk

Lakeland Arts are part of the North West Craft Network. Click here for more.

Two fabulous exhibitions of contemporary craft at Touchstones Rochdale

September sees two exhibitions of unique contemporary craft open at Touchstones Rochdale one of the North West's key galleries showing top craft from international and regional makers. 

Rosa Nguyen - Sanctuary. 

26 September - 22 November 2014

The preview is on Thursday 25 September 6pm-8pm and will be opened by Professor Stephen Dixon, ceramicist and Professorial Research Fellow in Contemporary Crafts at Manchester School of Art.

The exhibition is part of Asia Triennial Manchester 2014

And if that weren't enough, there's also an exhibition of Jilly Edwards’ Wanderlust tapestries opening the same evening. The exhibition runs 26 September - 22 November 2014

Both shows are part of our Contemporary Forward series supported by Arts Council England.

Touchstones Rochdale are part of the North West Craft Network. Click here for more.

Tactile Too - fantastic opportunity for recent textile students and graduates

Calling all North West students and recent graduates!

The Whitworth Art Gallery is looking to commission up to four contemporary textile makers to develop a textile handling resource as part of The Whitworth's 'Tactile Too' Textile handling Resource.

Applicants must be practising textile makers based in the North West of England. This includes students currently studying in the North West and students who have graduated from other colleges but who are now based in the North West.

Candidates must either be in their final year of their degree or have graduated no more than three years ago.

All applicants must respond to the theme:  Textiles Transform: Extra/Ordinary

The theme has been developed to explore the concept of the sensory nature of textiles, that they have the power to evoke personal emotional responses based on memory and subconscious perceptions. It is important to ensure that these ideas are clearly explained and demonstrated in the proposal submission and the tactile handling resource.

The deadline for submissions is Monday 15 September 2014

For more information about the commission and how to submit click here

For more information about Tactile Too and the artists whose work makes up the resource, click here