Cut and Fold

‘Cut and Fold’ features a collection of works that explore the interplay between design and form, redefining surface qualities through the malleability and performative possibilities of materials. The works reveal a fluency of line, a sense of movement and a haptic sensibility. Subtle acts of sensing or bold intervention challenge the perception of works in clay, wood, metal, leather, paper and textile. Featured makers include QEST Garfield Weston Foundation Scholar Frances Pinnock.

Ceramicist, Ashraf Hanna, uses space as a key component of design; three-dimensional patterns are achieved through exposure and concealment. In this new body of work, Hanna’s monochrome palette focuses on the relationship between line, shadow, and space in a group of cut and altered forms. Intrigued by the material qualities of clay, Olivia Walker works primarily with porcelain to explore the organic and decaying through the build-up of complex surfaces. Starting with a vessel thrown on the wheel, Walker then intervenes, carving, assembling, and disassembling. Precise forms, later covered in paper-thin accretions, enable the contrast between rough and smooth, completion and collapse, and internal versus external spaces to manifest.

Max Brosi’s organic works turned in green wood, accentuate the blending of interior and exterior curves. His hand carved ‘Edge Vessels’ feature textures characteristic of ripples on the ocean’s surface, emulating the lights reflection. Working with oak tanned leather across a range of scales – from handheld objects to large floor standing works – Frances Pinnock’s unlikely forms appear to balance in space. Her work explores the dichotomy between tension and release, between formulaic and intuitive movement and between motion and stasis. Hannah Robson’s textiles amplify the elemental changes in environments, the interplay of light and shadow on a surface and subtle shifts in density and texture.

Helen Carnac’s vessels are made by folding, unfolding and re-folding very thin copper into forms, before they are coated with layers of vitreous enamel and fired at temperature. Carnac’s new series of works, titled ‘Ammil’, draw upon an old local Devon word that refers to the coating of glistening ice on grass, leaf, and stone when freeze fast follows thaw. Donna Lynch creates textile works, intricately layered, pleated and appliqued in silk chiffon and satin. Understanding the relationship between movement and shape, her pieces suggest a fluidity and confidence of line. Lynch’s two-dimensional, framed material studies reveal a process of deconstruction and reconstruction, an unpicking of a tailored, formal approach towards raw, organic explorations.