Fri 7th Oct: Shipley Lates with Nora Fok

This time last week I took a train from one end of the country to the other, up to Newcastle to take part in an evening workshop event at Shipley Art Gallery to discuss accessories alonside the genius artist Nora Fok. This kind of organised community get-together is such a lovely way to discover new approaches to creative thinking by engaging in learning skills and simply interacting with like minded locals.
The beautiful gallery of design and contemporary craft currently has a retrospective show of the jeweller Nora Fok who's work is breathtakingly inconceivable in its intricacy and other-worldly tactile quality. We have a similar practise of using unexpected lowly materials to create our work and parallel preoccupations with natural form and structures. We also both make one-off art works that are constructed to be worn or displayed as decorative items in their own right. However, Nora's back catalog of work is entirely unique and like nothing else I have ever seen before. You must head over to her site to see a little taster of some of these bizarre and beautiful objects inspired by such sweet things as bubblebath recreated in woven nylon micro-filament. Here you can see her demonstrating a rainbow slinky necklace which Ive mirrored with a snapshot of the new Gateshead Millennium bridge which blinks in colours across the Tyne River near the gallery.
Nora brought these examples of her accessories to the workshop for the attendees to get their hands on and have a go at wearing in different ways ......... but to see the delicate and epic complex larger constructions like "Condensation" you really need to go to the actual exhibition to see for yourself ............ Cloud Nylon Exhibition ........