hanging

Laura Bradshaw-Heap

The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitude of mind… If you change your mind, you can change your life.

- William James.

  

My process.

My practice seeks to create a social experience within marginal community groups with little or no experience of the creative arts. For me, the end product is not the jewellery produced by the group. Rather the producing of jewellery is a means for developing a social experience within the group. It is these social experiences, of which I become a part of, which then inform my work.

This is me; a project.

The ‘this is me’ project was developed through a series of informal jewellery workshops with a group of women from the Irish Traveller community based in London, in co-ordination with Brent Irish Advisory Services (B.I.A.S.).

The aim of the women who took part was to show an alternative side to Irish Traveller life; one very different to that shown in the Channel 4 series “My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding”. B.I.A.S.’s aim was to create a coffee morning which would give the women a place to meet outside their site once a week, to offer new experiences and to develop self-confidence.

My aim as an artist was to create a shared dialogue with the women through the creation of jewellery; to gain a small insight Irish Traveller culture and to develop a collection of jewellery pieces which reflected the themes that emerged through our informal conversations.

My resulting jewellery pieces look to embody these themes. They are informed by the womens’ sense of colour and fun; the objects created during the workshops, and the processes used to create them.

 Without these women, these pieces would not exist.





Joana Cunha

I am a Portuguese designer maker based in London. In my work I use mainly traditional jewellery skills, but I am also interested in the combination of traditional skills with new technologies. My current work consists on hand made pieces which have been designed to trigger interaction between the wearer and the viewer. The main focus is on hidden spaces and movement.

 All the pieces have hidden elements which are the vehicle to incite the curiosity of the viewer and initiate a conversation with the wearer. Each piece hides something unexpected. Movements and touch reveal a word, a sound, an emoticon or a stone. The attention of the viewer is captured by colour and tactile contrasts.

The revelation of the hidden elements is the surprise that connects the viewer to the wearer, encouraging an interaction that may not have happened otherwise.

Laura McGrath

The objects and jewellery that I make are abstracts of the things I think about and research within my practice.  They are the staring points for broader exploration and are usually the precursor to other activities such as reading and writing.  The themes and ideas brought up by this research then feed back into the physical act of making and are a way of continuing my practice as an artist. 

I am principally interested in the object’s ability to act as a carrier for personal or social meaning.  Part of my exploration of this is to present and comment on their counter ability to be viewed as empty, meaningless and alienating.  For me, the designed object is a representation of human will over nature and man’s need for the meaningful to be made tangible. 

I graduated in 2011 with an MA in Goldsmtihing, Silversmithing, Metalwork and Jewellery from the Royal College of Art in London.  In 2010 I was fortunate enough to win The South Square Trust Scholarship and I have exhibited internationally, most notably as part of a group show Silver Where? at Gallery SO, Brick Lane, London and Let’s Have a Look at Gallery Marzee, Nijmegen, Holland.

Natalia Macia Bove

Born in Spain and having obtained degrees in different disciplines in Spain, France and the UK, jewellery designer Natalia Macia Bove is a recently graduated MA student from Sir John Cass Faculty of Art, Media and Design in London, where she graduated with Distinction. In her first exhibition at Schmuck we observe the expression of her fascination in human connections and fractal geometry using technology as a tool to transform a mundane material like nylon into jewellery pieces.

She finds in the use of modern technology a valuable new tool to democratise design in order to make it available to a wider part of the population and attempts to explore the marriage of the classic and the contemporary into a “future craft”.

Natalia’s portfolio includes work that stems from her interest in mathematics, using formulas to generate 3D forms and also a collection of pieces expressing simple narratives using hand gestures, a subject of study that has

 always been appealing to her.

“My work, and the techniques and materials I use, reflects the way I have expanded my research methods.  Within the multidisciplinary Design Suite Masters program, I have explored the expression of meaning through the interplay of hands and hand gestures, which was a shift from a focus in mathematical algorithms towards a more emotion-centered design.”

Natalia has recently moved to Qatar, in the Middle East. She is currently working on design commissions from private clients and building up a collection and is very excited to integrate new influences in her design practice.