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My interest in crafts and construction, together with a love of decoration and colour, have led my work into many different areas, taking me through a series of disciplines that includes woven and printed textiles and ceramics. My recent work uses much of the knowledge that I have gained from all these areas for it is undoubtedly true that one has to know the rules in order to break them.

Materials fascinate me. Early on in my career, Barbara Sawyer, who was teaching weaving at Camberwell School of Art and Design, introduced me to the collections of yarns produced by Paul Rodier at the end of the last century in northern France. These yarns were wonderful constructions in themselves and I found that the combination of different colours, twists and fleeces suggested the eventual fabric, which in most cases was a simple plain weave. The colourful cut, abstract, twisting strips of my recent work draws on these pieces, comprising of tangled masses of fibres, yarns, waste paper, discarded printed cloth, unrestricted but confined in space.

The crafts these days are something of an anachronism and have as many bad as good connotations, so that when given the opportunity to design and make an exhibition of new work for the exciting new building that houses the Crafts Study Centre at Farnham I found that I was happy to be constructing works in the tradition of craftsmanship, that take into account both function and purpose. The new works shown at the Crafts Study Centre were truly fun to make. This is an essential ingredient for me. These constructions possess many of the qualities of richness and spontaneity that I strove to achieve in my early work but without the laborious processes that were involved.

© Copyright 2006-2008 | John Hinchcliffe