Making Your Mind Up

The inaugural Jerwood Makers Open exhibition, which launches next week, shows just how far the boundaries of applied arts can be pushed.

The four contributing artists have worked on an eclectic collection of pieces, from jewellery that lights-up to finely balanced glass sculptures and a sound-and-clay work that references German film-maker Werner Herzog’s classic work Fitzcarraldo.

The Jerwood Makers Open show is the result of Jerwood Visual Art’s open-submission programme to showcase emerging artists working in the applied arts. Each artist was awarded £7500 to create new work for the show.

Farah Badookwala, who works on jewellery using hi-tech processes such as rapid-prototyping, has developed a range of brightly coloured objects that will light up, vibrate or move in response to human interaction.

Emmanuel Boos has created a series of cobblestone forms and flat wall pieces which examine both ceramic glaze and the domesticity of objects, while Heike Brachlow has worked up a collection of different-sized glass sculptures based on balancing toys.

Keith Harrison, meanwhile, has created a work based in a scene in film Fitzcarraldo where Klaus Kinski’s character journeys up the Pachitea river in a steamer playing Caruso opera records.

Aiming to give this scene ‘a contemporary cultural shift’, Harrison has built a huge dub reggae soundsystem, which will play music from the film on ceramic records. The artist says the work was inspired by listening to the Jah Shaka sound system at St George’s Hall in Exeter in 1994.

Jerwood Makers Open runs at Jerwood Space, London SE1, from 13 July-28 August