June 2017

YUKIHIRO AKAMA New Structures

Japanese maker, Yukihiro Akama creates a series of miniature ‘house-sketches’  from native British wood.

Yukihiro Akama's studio is located in a converted shed in his garden in Yorkshire. He works in silence, prefering the quiet as he spends his days "cutting wood into small house-shaped sections, spending a whole day working the surface textures, then working on detailed expression, painting, putting clays etc."  The only sound you may hear coming from the studio is the news on the radio, which he listens to in order to practice his English.

June 2017

MICHAELA GALL Painted Portraits - new works in clay and on paper

Ceramic artist, Michaela Gall studied at Chelsea School of Art and L’Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris. Her work is produced under the umbrella of Majolica, a form of ceramics originated in Renaissance Italy which uses tin-glazes painted over an opaque white background glaze, with an earthenware body.  Michaela creates one off pieces that are painted within the tradition of Folk Art, documenting various subjects such as historical events, patterns, symbols and figures from different cultures.

July 2017

SAMANTHA ALLAN Hothouse Part II

A new collection of original paintings and mono-prints.

In the midst of a snowy British winter, ‘glass palaces’ around the country steam up as they protect and nurture their tropical plants in structures often over two-hundred years old. With the snow melting off the roofs, artist Samantha Allan made expeditions to some of her favourite glasshouses to celebrate the ‘jungles in our gentle landscape’.

A series of inky blank silhouettes featuring twisted tropical vines, banana palms with their leaves torn and tattered like moth-eaten fabrics, lofty birds nest ferns and the carnivorous Venus Fly Trap are captured like Daguerreotypes (early photographic slides which were contemporary to the boom in glass house building in the 19th century).

Inspired by John Ruskin’s striking 5ft high paintings of flora and fauna which he used as teaching diagrams for his students, Samantha has created a series of limited edition, signed prints which play with scale, simplicity and boldness of form.

LAUNCHING ONLINE  - JULY 2017

In the Wild Garden 

The Shop Floor Project will soon launch a new collection of work by British artist Claudia Rankin. In the Wild Garden includes a series of mixed-media collages and ceramics in the artist’s signature shapes of wonky Georgian tea caddies, sugar pots, plates and vases all painted in salmon pink and smokey cream glazes. Featuring creatures and motifs that appear to come straight off the surface of a strange medieval tapestry, each piece in hand painted in Rankin’s unique ‘hand’.

Rankin’s love of color and her naïve yet refined sense of nature came early. Raised in London near the Victoria and Albert Museum, she lost afternoons wandering the textile and ceramic floors. And as a child, she puttered about her mother’s Oriental porcelain shop on Portobello Road. Her father, in advertising and film, collected stuffed owls. 

July 2017

KATRIN MOYE Painted Ceramics

The Shop Floor Project is proud to be holding an exhibition of new works by Katrin Moye inspired by still life paintings of three 20th centaury female painters: Mary Fedden, Winifred Nicholson and Joan Eardly. 

These new experimental works are based on the ceramics featured in the original paintings. "I liked the idea of the backwards and forwards nature of turning a painted representation of ceramics back into actual ceramics, but trying really hard to make a ceramic version of a painting, not a copy of the original ceramic item itself." 

Katrin is currently artist in residence at Nottingham Lakeside Arts which holds a collection of these paintings.

August 2017

AFRIKA ANIMALS Folk Forms

Handcrafted by a co-operative of women in South Africa who are bringing back to life the craft of beading in an extrodianry contemporary project. From the impoverished townships of Cape Town, these pieces have been the subject of a sell out exhibition at Sotherby's and are held in the Smithsonian collection, they are also the focus of the documentary Bigger than Barbie. The Shop Floor Project is excited to be showcasing a collection of new works.

The project is dedicated to reviving the tradition of African Beadwork,
taking the love and knowledge that is passed down, over the centuries, from mother to child and becoming a bridge from traditional bead works into contemporary artworks.

Septemebr 2017

DENISE ALLAN Relics; fragments of vanished material

AUGUST 2017

RAPAEL BALME From the Attic

The Shop Floor Project with hold an exhibition of new originals by Raphael Balme. Balme's work plays with colour and pattern using figures, creatures, and plants; drawing on folk art motifs, she makes dream like landscapes,still lives and room-scapes. She is a graduate of Chelsea College of Art.