Three new members of the Suffolk Craft Society are to feature in a showcase exhibition in Ipswich.
Genista Dunham from Bury St Edmunds is not one to shy away from a challenge. She has accumulated vast experience as an artist working with isolated and vulnerable groups of people. She is currently an Art Teacher at HMP Highpoint, combining digital mediums and the practical arts so that her students will discover how the work they do in the art room can be transferred to digital media. Genista explains the benefits of this work:
“Art provides a space for contemplation, reflection, distraction and fresh imagination through which it is possible to transcend the circumstances that have brought about their problems and incrementally bring about small changes to life and wider well-being.”
In her own studio Genista, a graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art in London, makes pots and bowls by recycling newsprint and used office papers with plaster, wax and oils, using processes such as painting, soaking and abrasion. She aims to achieve a sense of layered time through truth to material, by preserving fragments of headlines resulting in words rising to the surface in the finished article.
Victoria Constable, a jeweller based in Broome near Bungay, has always had a passion for jewellery and started as a child by making pieces using beads. Following a foundation course in Art & Design, at Trowbridge College in Wiltshire, she took a 3 year degree course in Jewellery & Metalwork at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College, graduating in 1999. Since then she has worked for several jewellery companies, both as a designer and maker, but in 2009 she launched “Mila Jewellery” to indulge her creativity and passion with her own designs.
“I live on the Norfolk / Suffolk border and I take a lot of my inspiration from nature and my surroundings. I am lucky to live in such a beautiful part of the country and have access to such wonderful scenery and beaches as inspiration, it's an ideal location. Colour through precious and semi-precious gemstones and texture are my favourite elements in working with silver and gold and I incorporate these in a lot of my work.”
As well as exhibiting in Suffolk galleries Victoria shows at various craft events throughout the year around the UK and also undertakes commissions.
Karen Risby, a ceramic artist from East Bergholt, combines selling her own work with running art workshops for galleries, community groups and schools. She is now based in Suffolk but until recently she was based at a studio in South London alongside working at the Bethlem Royal Hospital in Kent, managing a thriving art department and establishing a professional gallery space.
Karen graduated from Camberwell College of Art in 1994. She makes figurative ceramic sculptures, creating three-dimensional forms reminiscent of a line drawing or a simple illustration. These androgynous sculptures, in groups or alone, bestow the essence of fairy tale or myth. Karen is interested in exploring the beauty and the subtleties of imperfection which is often demonstrated in Japanese and Korean ceramics and culture, the juxtaposition of traditional aesthetics and a modern simplicity.
Genista, Victoria and Karen have recently been selected as the newest members of the Suffolk Craft Society. Their work will be showcased at the Society’s permanent exhibition space, at the Town Hall Galleries in Ipswich, from 5th February to 5th March. Alongside this exhibition of new members work and throughout the year Gallery 2 will show an ever changing range of contemporary designer crafts by the other members of the Suffolk Craft Society.
To find out more visit here.
