See/ Jerwood Applied Arts Prize 2007: Jewellery/ 12 Oct 2007 - 2 March 2008
General Information
Susan Cross and Adam Paxon are the joint winners of the Jerwood Applied Arts Prize 2007: Jewellery – the most prestigious prize in the applied arts world – worth £30,000. The prize is run by the Crafts Council and Jerwood Charitable Foundation to celebrate innovation, commitment and excellence within the applied arts.
The judges felt that Susan Cross and Adam Paxon were worthy joint prize winners, both representing different aspects of contemporary jewellery today. Rosy Greenlees, Director, Crafts Council said, “I am delighted that Susan Cross and Adam Paxon have won the prize. Their work demonstrates a vitality and skill which shows how exciting contemporary jewellery can be.”
Roanne Dods, Director, Jerwood Charitable Foundation said, “The work in this exhibition and the shortlisted artists taking part show that the applied arts can sit firmly alongside the rest of the fine arts. We congratulate all the artists on the quality of their work and imagination that they have brought to the prize, but most importantly congratulate the two winners.”
Established in 1995 by the Crafts Council and the Jerwood Charitable Foundation, the Prize ran on a six year cycle, with each year representing a different medium within the Applied Arts field: jewellery, textiles, ceramics, glass, furniture and metal. An exhibition of the shortlisted artists was hosted as part of the Jerwood Visual Arts Series at Jerwood Space and is now touring to UK museums and galleries.
The 2007 Jerwood Applied Arts Prize: Jewellery will be the final year that the Crafts Council runs the prize in partnership with the Jerwood Charitable Foundation. The Crafts Council and the Jerwood Charitable Foundation together have successfully developed and run the prize for 12 years but both now believe that the prize has come full circle in its current format– it started and, closes, with an award for contemporary jewellery.
Maker Profiles
Susan Cross
Susan Cross studied Jewellery design at Middlesex Polytechnic (now Middlesex University. In 1989, Cross established her studio in Edinburgh and began lecturing at the Edinburgh College of Art where she continues to share and encourage a meditative and thoughtful approach to jewellery making.
Travel, particularly her journeys to India and Japan, serve as a continued source of inspiration. Cross describers her work as ‘contained explosions of colour and jewel-like elements suspended among apparently random strands‘.
Adam Paxon
Adam Paxon was introduced to plastics as a student at Middlesex University. He was immediately attracted to the array of colours acrylic offered, but felt these colours were insensitive. He spent his final year laminating, forming and carving the material in order to blend colours and create his own palette challenging limits and investigating the potential of the material.
In Paxon’s words, ‘[I have] continued to develop my lamination and forming technique, though have latterly sought subtler colour palettes. A significant shift for me has been my recent exploration of the interior of the object, and I am now employing volumes of clear and mirrored acrylic, borrowing colour from the environment and incorporating the wearer/viewer’.
Mah Rana
Mah Rana’s studies at Buckinghamshire College in Silversmithing and Jewellery were followed by a MA in Jewellery at the Royal College of Art. More recently Rana has returned to education to study Psychology. Her work poses the question ‘Why do we wear jewellery?’
Rana explores this question in ‘Jewellery is Life’ and addresses our instinctive attachment to meaning in jewellery and its role as a social signifier. Rana draws on traditional jewellery forms, like lockets and cameos, to propose contemporary sentiments about the diaristic role of jewellery and how it makes us feel.
Yoko Izawa
Since her MA studies at the Royal College of Art, Yoko Izawa has been exploring concepts of ambiguity and formal material constraints.
For Izawa, the Veiled jewellery series, serves to ‘express my interpretation of Japanese cultural values and religious spirituality. Although certainty is often required in modern society, I am interested in exploring the concept of ambiguous expression by containing, veiling or wrapping’.
Grainne Morton
Grainne Morton is as much a collector as she is a jeweller. She specialised in jewellery at Edinburgh College of Art, attracted by the intimacy and miniature scale that jewellery affords. Her work is shaped by her fascination with bric-a-brac, eclecticism, and illustrations in children’s books. She describes her collections as ‘illustrations of my fairytale environments’.
Nora Fok
Two distinct experiences shifted the focus of Nora Fok’s current work. The first was the Weaving Stories exhibition in 2002, where she first introduced weaving into her practice. The second experience, two years later, was a visit to the Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants, presented by the Harvard Museum of Natural History. This exhibition quickly became the inspiration for the nylon botanical collection.
Fok is fascinated by nature and the ironic relationship between the magic and the insignificance of ‘plants behaving wonderfully’.
Find more about the winners of this prestigious prize and read the articles on Adam Paxon and Susan Cross in the Explore Craft section
Date Information
London 6 June – 22 July 07
Jerwood Space
171 Union Street
London
SE1 0LN
Lincoln 11 August – 30 September 07
The Collection
Danes Terrace
Lincoln
LN2 1LP
Edinburgh 12 October 07 – 2 March 08
National Museums Scotland, Chambers Street
Edinburgh
EH1 1JF
Bradford 15 March – 25 May 08
Bradford One Gallery Centenary Square
Bradford
BD1 1HY
Contact Information
National Museum of Scotland
Main switchboard on +44 (0) 131 225 7534.
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