Shaped by the Past: Miranda Meilleur

17 January – 15 March 2009

A new collection of work – including vessels and utensils - by silversmith Miranda Meilleur, inspired by the ornate decoration and architectural detail discovered in a derelict Welsh chapel.

For more information about the artist please visit: www.mirandameilleur.co.uk.

The Orchard: Edwina Bridgeman

29 November 2008 - 11 January 2009

This was a bespoke installation of work for Rochester Gallery and Craft Case drawn from The Orchard by Edwina Bridgeman, a large touring exhibition developed and managed by New Brewery Arts.

The Orchard is the culmination of more than a year’s work and research by artist Edwina Bridgeman. Central to the exhibition is a large installation re-creating an orchard, containing life-size trees, including a votive tree. This is hung with china objects, felt birds and personal mementos with branches wrapped in wool or covered with cherished curtaining from her aunt’s house. Smaller pieces focus on the imagery, magic, songs and stories related to apple trees.

As well as relating directly to North Kent's fruit-growing and harvesting traditions, the exhibition also reflected a new national wave of interest in self-sufficiency, sustainability, local home-grown or home-reared produce and the curative effect of nature and stillness.

Visitors had a chance to make their own contribution to the exhibition. Inspired by what they had seen and by their memories of apples and orchards, they could sit at a battered old table and write or draw their stories.

Find out more at www.newbreweryarts.org.uk.

Size Matters: 62 Group

27 September - 23 November 2008

An exhibition of new textile work from members of the 62 Group was created in response to the title Size Matters. This title was chosen by the group's committee to prompt an exploration of the relevance and diversity of scale in contemporary textile practice.

Individual submissions from national and international members were chosen by a panel of experts in August 2008. The resulting pieces were on display at Rochester Art Gallery and Craft Case.

The 62 Group was established in 1962 by a group of embroidery students. Since then its membership and remit has expanded to include all aspects of international textile art.

Robert Cooper and Stella Harding: Material Difference

26 July - 21 September 2008

Robert Cooper and Stella Harding work in different craft disciplines: ceramics and basketry respectively. They share a common interest in transforming basic materials, through the use of colour, pattern and texture, to create one-off pieces which explore the juxtaposition of different aspects of material culture.

Robert Cooper is an established ceramicist who has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally. He is fascinated by the persistence of artefacts and ideas over time. He often uses found objects, such as pottery shards from the Thames foreshore, which are imbued with a previous life and function, as a starting point for his work.

Stella Harding recently completed her training in creative basketry. Like many basket makers, she is excited by the interaction of line, texture, shadow and movement brought into play by the techniques and materials of basketry. She enjoys combining a range of different materials, both natural and synthetic, in her work. Many of the natural materials are collected from the garden or the wild and display a life and energy which are keenly exploited. Stella is particularly inspired by traditionally painted and stencilled baskets, old textiles and the calligraphy of different cultures.

Robert and Stella are partners and live together in Catford, South London. Robert works from a studio in Camberwell with a number of other well-known ceramicists and also teaches on several higher education ceramic courses. Stella combines her basket-making practice with work as a gardener at Restoration House, Rochester.

Dawn Badland: Bird and Bone

17 May - 13 July 2008

This exhibition, by Kent-based artist Dawn Badland, arose from her exploration of the Prentis ornithological collection held by the Guildhall Museum and from her discovery of the Victorian collector’s own book, Birds of Rainham by Walter Prentis. Further research followed, including a trip on the River Medway with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds to look at nesting sites on the salt marshes and an inquiry into the species currently associated with the area. The work seeks to provide an insight into the Prentis collection and the Victorian interest in accumulating and displaying birds and eggs. Badland’s imagery, derived both from the Medway landscape and from bird plumage patterns, combines current and past information and can be seen as a documentary process to record new findings.

www.dawnbadland.com.

Clara Breen: Flourish

29 March - 11 May 2008

Clara Breen creates jewellery in precious metals which is evocative of natural forms and textures and comes as a direct result of playful experiments.

Sheet metal is worked into bold, three-dimensional spiral forms, which evolve and grow spontaneously from the forging and hand-manipulating processes. The resulting pieces are sometimes creature-like, holding or surrounding smooth freshwater pearls.

The exhibition featured visual inspirations and three-dimensional sketches alongside finished pieces to expose the creative thought and making processes.

Wendy Daws: Memory

26 January - 24 March 2008

This exhibition, by Medway-based artist Wendy Daws, featured a series of acrylic installations on the subject of memory and narrative told through light and shadow. The viewer was encouraged to study the work carefully, to play detective to discover the stories hidden in the artworks.

A continuous memory blanket (a contemporary tapestry) demonstrated the artist's inter-related personal experiences. Individual episodes linked by threads - the ties which bind us - illustrating how Wendy perceives a sense of interconnection between the people and events in her life. Although the stories represent Wendy’s life, they have a resonance in all our lives.

In contrast, semi-circular shaped pods embraced the viewer, allowing shadows to fall upon them, drawing them into the narrative process. To view a timelapse film of the exhibition please visit http://www.spaghettiweston.com/wendydawsmemory.html.

Artwork demonstrating the development of the memory blanket and a series of contemporary portraits, inspired by Victorian silhouettes, were on display along with Wendy's emergency jewellery kits in the Craft Case.

www.wendydaws.co.uk.

Miriam Zadik Gold: Winter Stories

1 December 2007 - 13 January 2008

Central to artist Miriam Zadik Gold’s work is an experimentation with the materiality of everyday life. Ordinary items are removed from their mundane context to become part of a visual narrative loaded with meaning. Her assemblages and sculptures also use traditional and folk art techniques of mosaic and papercutting.

The juxtaposition of used and made, old and new creates a duality within which the innocent and the sinister are explored. The original approach to materials is matched by the layers of subject matter: cross-cultural memories, travel, migration and absence are explored in this personal, contemporary narrative.

Mike Scott: 'Chai' Wood

17 March - 13 May 2007

Mike Scott is highly respected in the woodturning field as one of the pioneers of freestyle turning, an approach driven by intuition rather than design. He produces one-of-a-kind wooden vessels, exploiting the inherent characteristics of the wood by turning, sandblasting, texturing, scorching and carving or by the addition of found objects or materials. Mike’s woodturning portfolio includes large-scale sculptural vessels and objects – rough-hewn organic or strongly geometric forms, wall-pieces and a range of simple, thin-walled bowl forms in black ash.

The name "Chai", which Mike uses to sign his work, is a shortened version of a Sanskrit word meaning awareness or consciousness - underlining the intuitive approach which is central to his creative practice.

For further information please visit www.chaiwood.com.

Jacqui Ramrayka: Hidden Depths

20 January - 11 March 2007

Jacqui Ramrayka trained in ceramics at the University of Westminster and now works from a shared studio in east London. Time spent travelling around south-east Asia and the Caribbean has greatly influenced her work, enabling her to draw on such diverse sources of inspiration as African artefacts and the textures of coral. In response to these varied surfaces, Jacqui produces wheel-thrown stoneware vessels which are glazed and multi-fired to achieve rich patinas with intense depth and variety. She uses the surface of her elegant forms as an artist does a canvas, to explore the limitless combinations of texture and colour produced by the complicated chemistry of ceramic materials and the heat of the kiln.

For further information please visit www.jacquiramrayka.com.

Scottish Jewellers: Elemental Abstractions

2 December 2006 - 14 January 2007

A showcase featuring the work of three contemporary Scottish jewellers: Sarah Keay, Jaimie MacDonald and Dot Sim. All create highly sculptural pieces in a variety of media, including metal filaments, glass beads and found objects, recycled plastics, silver and gold, inspired by natural forms, colours and textures found in the Scottish landscape.

Sheila Seepersaud-Jones: Telling Tales

14 October - 26 November 2006

The rich colours and strong sculptural forms of Sheila Seepersaud-Jones’ ceramics hold clues to her Guyanese roots and a dual career as a nurse and artist.

She has produced large-scale work in stoneware and bronze, as well as several collections of domestic ware. Based on traditional vessel forms, many of her ceramic pieces possess human and animal characteristics - their layered, drawn and painted surfaces implying narrative themes. Other bowls, dishes and platters can be read as abstract paintings, combining translucent washes of vibrant colour with geometric patterning.

For further information please visit www.seepersaud-jones.com.

Ruty Benjamini: A Dialogue with Clay

12 August - 8 October 2006
Inspired by landscape, the human form, weathered and effaced surfaces and ancient artefacts, Israeli-born artist, Ruty Benjamini works intuitively with clay, creating solitary and grouped organic, sculptural, ceramic vessels and figurines which she decorates in subtle, muted tones with oxides, slips and glazes to enhance surface texture and line.

Her work embodies the Japanese aesthetic of Wabi-Sabi: the beauty to be found in the ordinary and everyday – things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete.

Hannah Whale: Relics

10 June - 6 August 2006

Hannah Whale's work is an interpretation of the time she spent living and working in Romania, inspired by the lives of the abandoned and orphaned children she worked with. She endeavours to produce work that is evocative yet representative of the challenges she felt these children were faced with. In rendering the found objects and ceramic pieces like relics from the past, she aims to reflect the endurance, memory and loss suffered by these children.

1 April - 28 May 2006
Ursula Prosser: igotfelt!

This exhibition features unique and individual hand-made felt bags and cushions created from merino wool fibres stitched on to fabric. The eye-catching and humorous imagery takes the form of figurative motifs drawn from nature, popular culture, everyday objects and experiences, as well as a range of abstract designs in a broad spectrum of bold colours.

For time lapse documentation of the family workshop led by Ursula Prosser during her exhibition in Rochester Art Gallery, please visit www.spaghettiweston.com/igotfelt.htm.

Jennifer Collier: Found

28 January - 26 March 2006

An exhibition featuring non-functional dresses and shoes made from unconventional materials by Jennifer Collier, who describes her work below:

"I create innovative textiles from natural and found materials such as leaves, petals, packaging, fruit, tea bags etc. used in conjunction with fabric, plastics and paper.

My primary concern is the reuse of found materials to alter their function and make them into something beautiful. I use techniques such as weaving, bonding, fusing, waxing, embedding, knitting and embroidering the unconventional materials to create my fabrics. My most successful discovery to date is the use of real fruit, which I fuse between layers of organza. The stain that occurs around the fruit is actually the sugar that forms a natural glue that bonds the layers together, creating a highly original fabric.

I often draw from literature, with a single poem or quote providing inspiration. I primarily use my unconventional fabrics to produce non-functional dresses and shoes.

I scour markets, charity shops, fruit and vegetable stalls and pound shops to find the materials from which I create my work. I tend to find these items then investigate a way in which they can be reused and transformed."