ARTISTS TALKING

Devon Guild of Craftsmen, Riverside Mill, Bovey Tracey
25 January – 5 March

'Get Fresh', instigated by the Devon Guild of Craftsmen, was a showcase for recent applied arts graduates based in the south west of England. It wasn't trying to repeat the degree show experience, but was offering something potentially more useful to emerging makers: real deadline pressure (a valuable kick-start at the beginning of a career) within a supportive context. The pressure was very real indeed; these seventeen makers had only months between selection and exhibition to hone and develop their work. This intense focus was apparent in all of the work which was highly resolved and articulate without having been overworked.

Some of the work was product-orientated, such as Hanne Rysgaard's cast and printed ceramics inspired by airline food trays and picnic sets, and some more concerned with exploring material, like Sheila Hatch's hanging panels of layered multimedia textiles. Most didn't divide that clearly, and showed a combination of both approaches. Bronwen Gwillim's glasswork comprised both semi-opaque panels lit from behind and more conventional forms such as dishes. The square panels are made of crushed glass, fused in the kiln and embedded with delicate strands of copper wire. Air in the crushed glass allows the metal to oxidise and the familiar copper blues and greens bleed out from the filigree lines, blurring them with a soft etched quality. For her large shallow dishes, Gwillim takes elements from this more exploratory work, the sandblasted translucency and trails of copper for example, and translates them into high-quality, marketable objects – 'products' sounds too bland – with a desirable contemporary flavour. Vicky Haig, with her strange polished lava-like clay – in fact porcelain fired with combustible substances – showed a similarly experimental drive whilst remaining within the traditional vessel form and scale. It was exciting to see some work that pushed scale beyond the domestic. Caroline Sharp's tall woven forms did so without sacrificing intimacy and Penny Hemming's leaning steel monolith was a surprise. Shoulder-high, it demanded to be approached as sculpture, making her small-scale table forms seem comparatively lightweight.

These new makers have their feet firmly on the ground, as the questionnaires they completed for the guild reveal. Several are studying for a PGCE, some have families, and all have part-time jobs, yet many are in the midst of setting up studios on varying scales.

The guild hopes to make 'Get Fresh' a biennial exhibition, supporting new graduates whilst keeping an eye on the progress of past exhibitors. It's certainly a fresh approach, and one that deserves encouragement.

Emma Maiden

EMMA MAIDEN
is a sculptor and freelance writer living in Bristol.