The New Designers show is really two shows, both lasting four days with a three day break between them. The first show, the one I was interested in, is made up of four disciplines: Textiles, Fashion and Accessories; Contemporary Applied Arts; Ceramics and Glass; and Jewellery and Precious Metalwork. This time I did manage to bring a notebook and jot down the who did what, (though, sadly, photography wasn't allowed in most of the exhibition so no photos are available), but that's not to say that everything went smoothly. When websites tell you it's cheaper to book online you might want to look into that rather than assuming it's going to be a 50p discount. It might turn out to be more like a £5 discount and you might end up kicking yourself. Also, with hindsight I should have gone earlier and broken things up with lunch. As it was I left after an amazing hour and a half convinced that I'd missed loads, but suffering from complete visual overload.
Originally, I'd planned to write a bit about each of my favourite exhibits from the show, but as I left with a favourites list that had 27 people on it I decided to scale back a bit! After some agonising, here's my top three:
- Amelia Fever – she makes animal-skin shrugs and wraps, except that the animals are fake. This is a terrible description that doesn't do justice to Fever's clever and funny designs. The galleries on her website are a much better explanation.
- Koji Shiraya – Koji actually works with ceramics rather than textiles. I loved his series of vessels with lids that looked as if they were melting; I like the contrast between the appearance of the object and the medium's actual physical properties. Looking at his webiste it seems that he plays a lot with textures.
- Eva Joly – Eva produces printed designs based on very mundane domestic imagery. She manages to make the everyday eye-catching. She's also fascinated by the CMYK printing process and experiments with different colour combinations in her designs.
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