JERWOOD ART FUND MAKERS OPEN

Launched in 2010, Jerwood Art Fund Makers Open (formerly Jerwood Makers Open) is a biennial opportunity that recognises and promotes the significance of making practice and process within contemporary visual arts. It supports exceptional UK-based artist and makers within 10 years of beginning their practice to develop their creative ideas independently, enabling them to experiment, learn and take risks, with substantial curatorial support.

For its eighth edition, Jerwood Art Fund Makers Open launches a new collaboration with Art Fund and a partnership with Aberdeen Art Gallery who will host the final presentation of the exhibition in autumn 2022.

The exhibition will showcase five ambitious new commissions by awarded artists Anna Berry, Cecilia Charlton, Jahday Ford, Vicky Higginson and Francisca Onumah & Helena Russell, who will develop new work(s) for a national exhibition which will launch at Jerwood Space in London before touring to Newlyn Art Gallery and Aberdeen Art Gallery. Showcasing a broad range of material disciplines, including glass, textiles, digital modelling, silversmithing and sculptural installation, the five 2021 commissions provide a snapshot of some of the most exciting new work being produced by UK-based artists and makers.

Anna Berry will present a new sculptural work using her signature geometric visual vocabulary and repetitive processes. Focussing on clay and concrete as her core materials, both of which are new to Berry’s practice, the piece will look at ideas of balance and tension – how two materials at the opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of their fragility can exist within the same structure and in relation to one another. Anna Berry
Cecilia Charlton will create her largest work to date by developing a triptych of human-sized Bargello embroideries. Inspired by the Greek myth of the Three Fates who spin, allot and cut the Thread of Life, each panel will represent the characteristics of one of the Three Fates with a unique combination of colour palette and stitch patterns. Charlton aims to use the Three Fates to reflect on the current time of uncertainty we find ourselves in, with the thread of the Fates forcing us to examine our place on the planet and our relationships to one another. Cecilia Charlton
Jahday Ford is making a new collection of large glass vessels, which combine ancient techniques with contemporary innovations. Interested in exploring the relationships between the digital and the hand-made form, the works will extend Ford’s current glass investigations into processes such as 3D Modelling and using CNC mould production alongside traditionally hand-blown elements. Ford has set out to create a collection of illuminated glass vessels that for the first time feature interactive lighting phenomena using LED sensors, which will be activated by the movement of the audience around the works in the gallery space. Jahday Ford
Vicky Higginson’s commission will be a set of varied ‘healing devices’ made through combining hand-blown and cold-worked glass elements in a variety of colours, which come together to create multi-layered objects. These devices are inspired by research into historical medical equivalents and are imagined to heal the mind, as coping mechanisms to treat emotional ailments such as bad thoughts or things left unsaid. Continuing her exploration into ‘Folk Futurism’ these objects will look at the meeting point of folklore and fairy tales with science fiction. New techniques developed for this commission will showcase the use of feathers, neon, symbolic mark-making and mirroring. Vicky Higginson
Working in collaboration and using a hoard of old silversmithing tools as a starting point, the duo Francisca Onumah and Helena Russell will present a collaborative series of vessels and objects inspired by the past, present and future of the silversmithing industry in Sheffield, where they are both based. The project aims to challenge ideas of ‘preciousness’ and whether it sits with the final product or the making process itself. As part of the research for this commission, the artists have documented the personal histories of three Sheffield-based silversmiths, who have been involved in the industry in different capacities throughout most of their careers. Francisca Onumah Helena Russell

The artists were selected from more than 500 applications in response to a national call for entries for self-directed projects from UK-based artists and makers. The selectors for Jerwood Art Fund Makers Open 2021 were Dame Magdalene Odundo, Ceramicist; Yinka Ilori, Designer; Junko Mori, Metal Artist; Christine Rew, Art Gallery and Museums Manager, Aberdeen Art Gallery; Harriet Cooper, Head of Visual Arts, Jerwood Arts.

See Read More below for more details on each of the artists.

The award offers a supported, high-profile national platform for artists and makers at a pivotal moment in their careers.

Exhibition Dates:

Jerwood Space: 28 Jan – 9 Apr 2022

Newlyn Art Gallery: Dates 25 Jun – 1 Oct 2022

Aberdeen Art Gallery: Dates 19 Nov 2022 – 4 Mar 2023

Jerwood Art Fund Makers Open is led by Jerwood Arts in partnership with Art Fund and Aberdeen Art Gallery.

You may also be interested in CORNWALL DESIGN: THE ART OF MAKING a celebration of craft and design showcasing some of the best makers working in Cornwall and the south west, showing at Newlyn Art Gallery.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Anna Berry is a self-taught artist from Scotland, living in Milton Keynes. Her work is usually shown in non-gallery environments. She has a background in philosophy and commercial photography, both of which inform her practice. Anna is most known for her large, often kinetic, interactive installations in public space. These tend to involve a long and painstaking process of crafting from ephemeral materials for a non-archival outcome. She received an Unlimited Commission for her large kinetic installation Breathing Room which premiered in 2021 at Milton Keynes International Festival and will continue to tour in 2022. She was also DASH curator-in-residence at MAC Birmingham 2019/2020.

annaberry.co.uk

Cecilia Charlton is a London-based American artist. She received a BFA Painting in 2015 from Hunter College in NYC and an MA Painting from the Royal College of Art in 2018. Cecilia’s work draws on her upbringing as the daughter of a seamstress, utilising textile processes to explore the effects of abstraction, geometric pattern, colour and composition. Recent projects include Love Token, a commission in the shop window of Robert Young Antiques, Battersea as part of their Contemporary Collaborations programme (August and September 2021). She also ran a series of textile workshops with 55+ Ilford residents through SPACE Studios, which culminated in the solo exhibition Mammoth Loop in SPACE Ilford’s gallery (October 2021 through January 2022). Cecilia has exhibited in the UK and internationally; her recent exhibitions include: Aurora, Candida Stevens Gallery, 2020 (solo); Parade, curated by Kris Day, Broadway Gallery, UK, 2019; Tender Touches, curated by Ines Neto dos Santos and Huma Kabakci of Open Space Contemporary, AMP Gallery, London, 2019; and SURGE: the Eastwing Biennial, Courtauld Institute, 2018.

ceciliacharlton.com

Jahday Ford is a glass artist and designer from Bermuda, currently based in Manchester. He is a graduate from Manchester School of Art where he received a BA in Three-Dimensional Design, specialising in hot glass fabrication and mould design. Ford has participated in exhibitions in the UK and internationally and in 2020 took part in the Future 20 Collective Artist Residency and Exhibition at HOME, Manchester. His projects Breathe and Deconstruct have been exhibited at Corning Museum of Glass, New York, USA (2019); New Designers, London, UK (2017); Design Junction, London, UK (2017); Manchester Craft & Design Centre, Manchester, UK (2018); and The National Centre for Craft & Design, Lincolnshire, UK (2018). His most recent work, a collaboration with Studio Morison on the installation Silence: Alone in a World of Wounds, was showcased at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, UK (2021).

jahdayfordglass.co.uk

Vicky Higginson is an Edinburgh-based artist working mainly with hand blown and cold-worked glass. Since graduating with a Masters in Glass from the University of Sunderland in 2011 she has exhibited work nationally, notably at the British Glass Biennale in 2012 and 2019, and Collect in 2019; and internationally in Ireland, Japan, the Czech Republic and the US. Residencies at Edinburgh College of Art and North Lands Creative have been pivotal in the development and evolution of Vicky’s work, allowing her the freedom to experiment and change approach, developing personal style and themes. She was awarded the Student Award at the 2012 British Glass Biennale, the Creative Scotland Emerging Artist Bursary in 2015, and received a scholarship to a masterclass at Corning Museum of Glass in 2018.

vickyhigginson.com

Francisca Onumah is a Ghanaian born silversmith who graduated with an MA in Jewellery and Silversmithing from Birmingham School of Jewellery in 2015. She was selected for the two-year Starter Studio Programme for jewellers and silversmiths at Yorkshire Artspace in Sheffield (2017-19), where she was awarded the ‘Precious Little Gems’ commission from the Sheffield Assay Office (SAO). The commission was exhibited in the Millennium Galleries at Museums Sheffield (2019) and is now part of the SAO silver collection. An alumnae of the Crafts Council’s 2020 Hothouse programme, Onumah’s work was featured in Maker’s Eye: Stories of Craft, Crafts Council Gallery, London, UK (2021) and Craft Festival, Bovey Tracey, UK (2021). In 2022 her work is on display as part of We Gather, Crafts Council Gallery, London, UK; Harewood House Craft Biennial, Leeds, UK; and she will complete a window display for Bluecoat Display Centre, Liverpool, UK.

franciscaonumah.co.uk

Helena Russell graduated from Sheffield Hallam University with a BA Hons in Jewellery and Metalwork and an MA in Design. Throughout her studies she focused her design development on interaction, exploring the movement of an object with fittings and connections as well as how we hold and use drinking vessels, and how the form of the vessel can encourage different sensory responses and experiences. Helena is currently based in Persistence Works, Yorkshire Artspace, Sheffield in the Starter Studio, a programme for early career Silversmiths and Jewellers, here she has been developing her practice and body of work which she has taken to exhibitions and craft fairs including Goldsmiths Fair and New Designers. Helena presented work at Goldsmiths Fair again in October 2021. In 2016 she received the Contemporary British Silversmiths Design in Silver Award.

helenarussell.co.uk