Research Lab CRAFT! is a one-year course for post-graduate students across ceramics and glass, textiles and ädellab. The course allows students time to develop a specific research interest in the field. Through the study of research methodologies students refine their research questions and investigate how these can be explored and expressed within their chosen medium.

The members of the course who have chosen to show work this year illustrate the breadth of the research areas undertaken.

Sofia Björkman’s practice produces poetic responses to quiet moments. Subtle shifts in material and context are considered and examined, exploring the relationships between objects and viewers.

Marie O’Connor takes the 1973 book Cut my Cote as her starting point to investigate the relationship between 2D patterns and 3D garments, moving from the historic to the contemporary and between the archive and the lived world.

Jenny Edlund explores the relationships and hierarchies between the sexes and between gender performances. By disrupting – or queering – these performances, she focuses on difference and power relationships.

Markus Emilsson’s research has blurred the line between performance and glass manufacturing. Drawing on glassblowing demonstrations and contemporary cabaret and theatre, the work sits between, and joins, these two fields.

Polat Ghasemloo considers inheritances: both material and emotional and how we manage, incorporate and mediate their effects on our lives and wellbeing.

Annika Pettersson’s Glitch in the Copy investigates how the accumulation of “noise” in copying and reproduction processes can be manifested in jewellery, using both historical research and an examination of contemporary production.

Matt Smith, Guest Professor / Ceramics & Glass