Work by Jack Stiling
Curious Things
Jack Stiling, Barbara Keal and Richard Keal
5 December to 8 January 2016
New Craftsman Gallery, 24 Fore Street, St Ives, Cornwall, TR26 1HE
Throughout the Christmas season and into the New Year, New Craftsman presents a fantastical show of contemporary craft curiosities by woodworker Richard Keal and felt worker Barbara Keal, alongside an astonishing first exhibition of works by new automata artist Jack Stiling.
A recent graduate of University College Falmouth’s Contemporary Crafts degree, automata artist Jack Stiling’s unique talent has earned him his first ever exhibition at New Craftsman. Inspired by classic literature, hand-me-down stories and campfire fables, Stiling’s fantastical objects astonish and entertain, drawing the viewer into a world of marvellous mechanisms, magic and illusion, where curiosity is king and all things are possible. Find yourself face to face with peculiar personages such as ‘Band Boy’, a hand-built, animated puppet, ‘The Craftsman’, a character comprised of assorted findings ranging from a shoe tree to a helicopter engine, and marvel at the ‘Cannonball Run’, complete with explosive onomatopoeic surprise.
Creative couple Richard and Barbara Keal live and work alongside each other, and recognising themselves as human members of the family of all living things, they use wood, wool, feathers, grasses and other natural materials to make objects which affirm this timeless relationship. By way of lengthy handmaking processes, the Keals let the beauty of their raw materials speak of their natural origins, and each of their highly unique works retains the vitality of the living plants and animals from which they come.