Crafting a Difference at Formed

Spotlight on our selected artists

We've loved curating the Crafting a Difference showcase for Formed with Future Heritage and there's still time to visit us at Design Centre Chelsea Harbour. The show is open until Friday from 9.30-5.30 and we have work by over 30 internationally acclaimed artists presented by Cavaliero Finn, jaggedart and Vessel Gallery as part of the Crafting a Difference collaboration.
We selected work by ten artists from the Cavaliero Finn portfolio for the Crafting a Difference presentation including, Katharine Swailes, Ikuko Iwamoto, Cecilia Moore, Sophie Cook, Sun Kim, Tim Martin, Björk Haraldsdóttir, Jacy Wall, Sarah Purvey and Frances Priest. Here's a selection of images (by photographer Robert Chadwick) of just some of the wonderful pieces we have on show.
Left to right: Cavaliero Finn artists Cecilia Moore, Sprouting Biomorph, 2023, Katharine Swailes, Chalk Sun and Harvest Moon (Diptych), 2022 - Glass sculpture by Karin Mørch represented by Vessel Gallery - Wall sculpture by Kazuhito Takadoi represented by jaggedart
There's an undeniable sense of calm and warmth that emanates from Katharine Swailes' handwoven tapestries Chalk Sun and Harvest Moon recounting tales of the rural landscape from summer's past.
Katharine has created textiles for over 30 years, specialising in conventional flat wall works and smaller three-dimensional sculptural pieces. She was shortlisted for the Cordis Prize in 2016 and 2019 and in 2020 her work was included in the exhibition Common Thread at the New Art Centre, Wiltshire.
Many of Cecilia Moore’s playful metal sculptures are inspired by memories from her childhood. The arrival in the 1960s of BBC2 with David Attenborough at the helm brought nature programmes filmed from all over the globe, introducing new plants and animals to its viewers, opening their eyes to whole new world.
Sprouting Biomorph, 2023 is one of three sculptures inspired by this weekly introduction to nature, based on the plant Stephania, originating from Asia. This body of work is a developing series called Biomorphs which look at nature and its continuous growth and evolvement. As the series has developed, the works have become more elaborate in growth and the patination more intricate. The first piece from this series was recently selected for the 142nd Royal Ulster Academy Annual Exhibition in the Ulster Museum.
Cecilia trained as a silversmith and works in metal, usually copper and copper based metals. As these metals have become more scarce, methods of mining them have become hugely devastating to the environment. For this reason Cecilia reuses metal, often unwanted items or scraps, and sometimes dismantling her own work to reuse in a new project. These are the sources for the Biomorph Series.
Cecilia's work has been selected for numerous national and international exhibitions, and is in public and private collections, including the Ulster Museum, the National Museum of Ireland, the State Collection of Ireland, and the National Irish Visual Arts Library. She has completed several public art commissions and been selected for Design and Crafts Council of Ireland’s “Critical Selection” from 2017- 2023. In 2018 she won the Golden Fleece Award a major national prize for visual artists in Ireland.
Wall work by Ikuko Iwamoto: Left to right: Ghosts from the Sea III, 2023, Compulsion 002, 2023, Compulsion 001, 2023, In the Evening, 2019, In the Morning, 2019 - Table work: Left to right:
Tallismen Triptych, 2023 by Björk Haraldsdóttir, sculpture by Roger Hardy represented by jaggedart and Spákona I andII #2, 2023 by Björk Haraldsdóttir
Following a sell out show at Collect earlier this year, Ikuko continues to develop her Ghosts from the Sea series which explores environmental concerns. Growing up near the sea in Japan, on a mainly pescatarian diet, these sculptures arose from Ikuko’s serious concerns about the damage caused by high sea bottom trawling which causes irreparable damage to vulnerable deep-sea ecosystems.
Tallismen Triptych, 2023 by Björk Haraldsdóttir - Detail of In the Evening, 2019 by Ikuko Iwamoto
Björk Haraldsdóttir's latest work, created in her new studio in Dorset, features a new bold monochrome pattern continuation which spans the width of the Tallismen Triptych.
Having previously trained and worked as an architect, second career artist Björk was invited to create an installation for the RA Summer Show by curator and former colleague at Richard Rogers Partnership, Peter Barber. Björk's 17 piece installation, The Home of the Opuntian Locriansin featured alongside work by the late Phyllida Barlow in the architecture room. We can see some of the shapes of the forms Björk created for this installation in this new pattern continuation.
On the shelf wall: Two new group of Geometric Vessels by ceramicist Sun Kim featured alongside work by Rachel Shaw Ashton represented by jaggedart.
Sun Kim focuses on making functional objects which explore the relationship between the traditional and the contemporary. This series of geometric vessels form a language of work that Sun has been developing and refining for the last few years and they play with geometry and composition. Sun’s making process involves different techniques such as wheel throwing, hand building and assembling. Her aim is to explore three-dimensionality, emphasizing the senses of volume, tension and expansion within a form.
Sun has work in the permanent collections of the Museum of Northern Ireland and the Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art, Japan.
On the table right to left: The earthy and extremely raw and tactile works of Cavaliero Finn artist Sarah Purvey sit alongside the more ornate but equally earthy ceramic vessel by Jo Taylor represented by Vessel Gallery.
Ochre Edge, 2021 by Sarah Purvey
When Sarah Purvey works in her studio, it is a quiet space without the disturbance or external influence of background music or voices on the radio. She uses the time to listen, to feel and to respond to the liminal connections discovered there. The process allows the language and the rhythm of her making to intuitively speak for her, resulting in a visceral and introspective experience shared through the responsive energy and action in her work.
Sarah's practice is evenly divided between two and three-dimensional form, with drawing being the unifying factor between both mediums. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of Corsham Court, Wilstshire, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, Chippenham Museum, Swindon Museum and Art Gallery and private collections worldwide.
On the shelf, work by Cavaliero Finn artist Tim Martin shown left to right: Rain Cloud, 2023 Mint Cloud Tree, 2023 and Standing Cloud, 2023. Featured alongside work on the wall by Lis Costa, Duke Christie and Batool Showghi from jaggedart and glass sculpture by Peter Bowles from Vessel Gallery
Tim Martin constructs unique, mysterious and elegant ceramic sculptures that stem from an architectural background and a love of 20th Century minimalist art. His work distills landscapes, figures and natural objects to their simplest forms. They aim to push an emotional response - a memory, a human pose, an exotic garden, a hint of something familiar, yet enigmatic, ambiguous. The sculptures suggest a layered and graphic aesthetic, often playing off each other as assemblages.
In 2019 Tim was one of 21 selected artists at Fresh in the British Ceramics Biennial in Stoke-on-Trent, UK.
Wall work by Cavaliero Finn artists - Jacy Wall: Folded Loss, 2013/16 and Water's Edge 2023. Katharine Swailes: Strong Yellow, 2022 and Herbaceous Verdure, 2022 - Table works by Steven Edwards, Sandra A. Fuchs and Louis Thompson represented by Vessel Gallery
Talking about Folded Loss and Water's Edge, Jacy Wall said: "These tapestries are part of a series that originated with an unusual blue green wool child's dress that I encountered at the Whitworth Museum in Manchester, whilst researching a project about mending. It was clear from the adaptations, the rough darning, the embroidered patches in russet and yellow, the fading and staining, that it had clothed more than one child during its lifetime. Despite this evidence of hard wear, this tiny dress is still infused with the life and joy of a small child, and at the same time is also intensely poignant, as it had been found in the tomb of the last child to wear it, in Egypt, over 1000 years ago.
"Initially the work I made about the dress was in direct response to the visual interventions of mending, but something about the way the main blues and greens had faded and worn was very evocative, and I took these colours into these two pieces, increasingly simple and abstract, still rooted in that child's dress, whilst also looking for a wider context."
Jacy hand dyes all the colours she uses, constantly mixing and adjusting tones rather as a painter might. She enjoys quietly challenging the basic grid structure of weaving in order to find an extra sensitivity of line and often cuts into and re-constructs work.
Porcelain vessels by Sophie Cook
A sea of porcelain vessels by Sophie Cook feature as part of our curation at Formed, chosen to pull out colours from the surrounding artworks. Cavaliero Finn has been featuring Sophie Cook's wonderfully elegant and joyfully coloured porcelain vessels on and off since the gallery was founded in 2004.
Having graduated from Camberwell School of Arts in 1997, Sophie has spent more than 25 years working in porcelain hand throwing her ceramic forms, constantly pursuing perfection in form and colour.
Ceramic vessels by Cavaliero Finn's artist Sophie Cook in perfect harmony with glass sculptures by Lena Bergstrom and Emma Baker from Vessel Gallery
In a recent interview in Ceramic Review, Sophie said: "I'm always striving to find the next perfect shape or the next perfect colour - it's an obsession." And it is an obsession. Sophie throws at least four pieces a day of the same shape, creating bottle, pod and teardrop forms in her pursuit of perfection. Her throwing is precise and the making process often precarious. After two days of drying, the pots are then carved for a refined silhouette - an extremely time consuming process. Once spray-glazed, they stand to dry for a week and are fired to 1250°C. It is an incredibly delicate operation and rarely, if ever, do all four pieces survive.
Sophie's vessels are a can be found in a number of permanent museum collections including the Geffrye Museum, London, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Manchester City Galleries.
In the foreground work by Frances Priest: Vase Form, Byzantine VI, 2022
Pattern obsessed Frances Priest creates intricate and colourful ceramic objects that celebrate ornament and pattern. The work explores and interprets languages of ornament from different cultures, places and periods in history and is heavily influenced by her travels and a book she grew up with, The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones, first published in 1856. As a child, Frances read this book from cover to cover, and so began her love of pattern. Frances uses clay as a canvas on which to build richly drawn and layered surfaces of inlaid line, glaze colour and enamel decals. Inspired by the Byzantine pages of The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones, Vase Form, Byzantine VI, 2022 is part of a series of works which reflect on the source material depicted in the colourful chromolithographic pages of the folio, documenting decorative designs in mosaic, stone carving, enamel and metalwork.
Frances is a QEST ambassador and her work has been acquired by a number of museums including the National Museums of Scotland Edinburgh, The Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, The Victoria & Albert Museum London, McManus Galleries Dundee, The Shipley Art Gallery Gateshead, The International Museum of Ceramics Faenza, Italy and The International Museum of Contemporary Ceramics Ichon Province, Korea.
Back wall featuring hand woven tapestry Blue Favour, 2023 by Jacy Wall, paintings by Katie Mawson represented by jaggedart. On the table, glass scuplture by Louis Thompson represented by Vessel Gallery and Tails from Europe - three piece installation, 2023 by Cavaliero Finn artist Cecilia Moore
Tails from Europe - three piece installation, 2023 by Cavaliero Finn artist Cecilia Moore
See the Formed exhibition page for a full display of the work we have on show. Follow Cavaliero Finn on instagram for daily updates on our exhibitions and artists.
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