This March, The Gallery presents Rising Stars, an exhibition which highlights seven recent graduates from UK Art Colleges.

Read more in our Rising Stars film blog here.

From jewellery and silversmithing to basket making, each graduate represents a unique and fresh voice within contemporary applied arts – their use of materials and techniques push the boundaries of their respective fields.

Alexandra Emmeline Barnes

Alexandra passes the time with a multitude of creative hobbies that gave her the foundation to her jewellery style. Her paintings and writing paved the way for her craft and instilled a whimsical flair into the Infest Collection. Looking for the beauty in all things that scuttle and soar, Alexandra’s fascination was captured by the insects she saw in Edinburgh and Glasgow’s museums. This then materialised through her practice of embroidery and beadwork. Alexandra opts for more traditional methods of making with a contemporary uniqueness to delight varying generations of customers and clients.

Alexandra Emmeline Barnes graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2022 with First Class Honours.

Her Infest Collection has been exhibited at the International Graduate Show, Galerie Marzee (Netherlands) and was shortlisted for the John Byrne Award 2022.

Amy Findlay

Slug mucus represents the journey each slug has been on. Leaving behind a trail of slimy mucus across any surface and telling a story of their intentions.
My collection focuses on the disgust of slugs and translating this into fine jewellery, enrapturing the viewer to look closer and create a bond with the unlikely creatures. A fun and playful series of characters are included in the collection. This story is told through the colour, shape and size of stones used. Patination is added to the slugs, giving them a realistic appearance.
Each slug can be worn as a brooch, trailing over your garments, or as a wall decoration. Hand carving each slug and casting them into bronze and silver. I also set a variety of stones into the body to translate the slimy nature and turn them into fine jewellery.

Amy Findlay graduated from The Glasgow School of Art with a degree in Silversmithing and Jewellery in 2022. After graduating, she became an Artist in Resident at GSA and is continuing her craft and collection of slugs.

Ismail Ahmad Kamran

Ismail Ahmad Kamran is a contemporary jeweller residing in the UK. His Pakistani roots and interest in modern art reflect in his designs, expressing his religious and cultural identity in a modern context. Ismail gets his inspiration from Islamic arts, (modern) architecture and optical art. Ismail’s pieces, immersed in both eastern and western cultures, spark the interest of a diverse audience, from the villages of Punjab to the cities of Europe. He uses a combination of modern and traditional jewellery-making techniques to create architectural and visually complex pieces of jewellery. Ismail’s current work explores the use of titanium. The unique features and the limited flexibility of the metal allow him to use innovative techniques to create contemporary art.

Ismail Ahmad Kamran is a contemporary Pakistani jeweller based in London. He comes from a family of jewellers who have been in the trade for over seven generations. From a young age, Ismail’s interest in jewellery was sparked because of his heritage. He used to help his father in their jewellery store, picking up small techniques here and there.
His passion for jewellery remained and he decided to study Jewellery and Silversmithing at the University for the Creative Arts, where he graduated in 2022.

Heidi Korkala

Coming from a small town north of the arctic circle in Norway, Heidi Korkala grew up surrounded by mountains and nature, the fore she has always had a strong connection to nature. While studying in London she intensely felt the lack of natural landscapes. On moving to Scotland a few years later she instantly fell in love with the rugged Scottish landscape. Heidi particularly connected to the remote areas of Scotland such as the north coast and the islands.

Being a keen enameller, Heidi aims to capture the beauty of the wild Scottish landscape in her pieces. She uses colours to evoke emotion and memory of a place, focusing on colours in the landscape and on the changing colours throughout the day such as morning or evening. Through exploring the forms and shapes of the landscape, she aims to establish a connection to the place. This results in wearable landscapes that becomes little worlds of memory and reminiscence.

Heidi is a graduate of Duncan of Jordanstone Art College in Dundee, where she studied Jewellery and Metal Design. Heidi is now based in Edinburgh, and teaches at Silverhub Jewellery School in Leith.

Dingyuan Liu

I believe every piece of handmade jewellery is just like a thumbprint, it is special and unique.
Material is the body of the jewellery, and jewellery making is not limited to specific materials. Working on a variety of materials has allowed me to have more flexibility when I am designing pieces. Different materials can be used to create works by using various techniques which affect the visual expression of the work, as well as the contextual background of the work.
My inspiration comes from the objects around me, and fun or troubling things that happen in life. Each of my pieces is carefully thought out and created, and there are always stories behind them. I also realized jewellery can be more than just a decorative piece, it can be more interactive, playful as well as genderless and would like the wearer to feel the joy of the jewellery.

Dingyuan Liu studied Jewellery and Silversmithing at Edinburgh College of Art, and graduated in 2022. Dingyuan won the Hammerman ECA Travelling Scholarship award in 2022, as well as being shortlisted for the Mark Fenn Award.

Helen Munday

Born: 1975

Place of Birth: London

‘From the first time I made a basket I was hooked! The smell, the feel of the willow and the pattern and repetitive strokes just came naturally to me. The possibilities are endless.’ Helen Munday

Helen Munday, although born in London, grew up in the Sussex countryside, before choosing art college at the age of sixteen. Seeking a sense of community and freedom, she moved ‘on the road’ in 1996 and spent twenty years travelling, some of it with horse and wagon, raising her young family.

Taking up basket making came as a natural choice as hedgerow materials were readily available and you don’t need lots of expensive tools. Continuing living her alternative, traveller lifestyle in her self-converted truck in rural Herefordshire, Helen’s work is often influenced by her anarcho-socialist views. Learning traditional basketry skills from accomplished makers such as Jenny Pearce and Joe Hogan, Helen gained the knowledge and proficiency that enabled her to turn her passion into a business.

Returning to education in 2019 Helen studied Contemporary Design Crafts at Hereford College of Art. This allowed her to explore and experiment with her practice and create objects with a narrative behind them.

Hayley Worthington

My recent collection focuses on a set of decorative boxes that have delicate silver elements of plant life on top with small scale embroidered details. The floral forms, taken from my own observational drawings, have been hand pierced and hammered to give texture and to manipulate the metal into shape. These are complimented with bud-like features which have been hand embroidered with cotton threads in a muted colour pallet. With the stitch, it brings pops of colour and a slight illusion, from a distance it appears to be enamel but as you get closer you begin to see the threads and textures of the embroidery. For me, the boxes are like small scale gardens, bringing the beauty of the natural world into a precious object, allowing us to appreciate nature from inside our homes too.

Hayley Worthington is a mixed- media silversmith based in bedfordshire, who graduated from De Montfort University in 2022. She specialises in the unique combination of the contrasting materials, metal and textiles. By exploring delicate, quiet aesthetics with elements of interaction it enables her audience to build connections to the pieces. Hayley’s inspiration is drawn from the nature in her garden and the local countryside, particularly the forms in flora and fauna. It is important to her that she brings nature into peoples homes through precious objects and enhancing the beauty within them. The textile elements of her work bring a contrasting texture and pops of colour to her silver pieces.

Rising Stars