New Year's Curator's View

Happy New Year – and what better way to start this 10th Anniversary year for Bevere Gallery than the Annual Graduate Show. Bear with me if I repeat again the key criteria for showing at Bevere. There are only two; self-evident craft skills and an original voice.  Neither of these are easily acquired and for that reason the same criteria are applied to curating the Graduate Show and our final list of exhibitors are blessed with these qualities.

This year we are particularly pleased that the eleven graduates who are showing will maintain the Gallery's reputation for quality and diversity. We have also tried to ensure that the show represents the current trends in design and making. Whilst there is a melding of the traditional with  the contemporary, we are seeing increasing use of new technologies such as computer aided design and computer printing. We know that the use of these processes is controversial for some ceramic enthusiasts and we anticipate that this will generate an interesting debate amongst our visitors. For myself, I have to say that our judgement should be influenced more by what we see and feel rather than by process issues alone.

As usual, we will be asking every visitor to the show to cast a vote for the graduate that they like the best – not always an easy task. The maker with the most votes will be represented by the Gallery during the course of 2016. The work of the winner  last year - Laura Murphy - has been shown several times during 2015 and she will be showing a small group of her pieces One Year On.

I have avoided listing the exhibitors as they are readily accessible on our website and I also want to avoid any bias towards one maker or another and thus influencing your vote when you visit, as I hope you will. Suffice to say we are very pleased with the show and we hope that it will the most fitting start to this Anniversary year.