The Good Life
11 Oct - 6 Nov
10.00 – 18.00 Tues - Sat
11.00 – 17.00 Sun & Mon
The Biscuit Factory
16 Stoddart Street
Newcastle
NE2 1AN
0191 261 1103
FREE
As part of this year’s Design Event Festival The Biscuit Factory present ‘The Good Life’, featuring critically acclaimed furniture studio bark and simplistic and architectural influenced screen prints by Emma Lawrenson. Working to this year’s Design Event theme of Happiness ‘The Good Life’ aims to explore the influence of mid century design aesthetics on modern design applications a true synergy of the classic and contemporary.
Based in Cornwall, bark offers a fresh take on bespoke, British-made furniture. Their passion for the truly great furniture designers and architects of the 20th century leads to hours of research to extract the essence of what these industry heroes bring to modern design. Their interpretation of the mid-century design aesthetic is presented in this exhibition - their first of a family of collections of interior furniture.
bark is a collaboration between husband and wife team, Jonathan Walter and Lakshmi Bhaskaran. Their work has been featured in The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph and Grand Designs:
Jonathan Walter
Jonathan started designing furniture in 2002, while studying cabinet making at a school in Sao Paulo. In 2006 he moved to Devon to continue his studies at the David Savage School of Fine Furniture, and has been making bespoke furniture ever since. Earlier this year Jonathan set up his own workshop in Cornwall, from where he and Lakshmi now work.
Lakshmi Bhaskaran
Lakshmi has been heavily involved in the design industry for over ten years. An established writer and the author of five design titles, in 2008 her passion for design saw her embark on a new career as a designer-maker, studying at the David Savage School of Fine Furniture, where she met Jonathan. Lakshmi also writes a regular column for CRAFTS, the Crafts Council’s bimonthly magazine.
Emma Lawrenson’s love of intangible negative spaces are often inspired by fragments of architecture which manifest in the re-reading and representation of often recognizable shapes into abstracted forms, often concealing their origins. The screen printing process is the perfect tool for Emma to create her work, as it allows her to produce smooth and crisp images.
The synergy between these makers comes with the re-construction and reinterpretation of line, the idea of inspiration from one tangible point of reference developing into a simplified end product. Colour, line, spacial effect, proportion and scale combine to produce retro inspired designs that evoke golden memories of times gone by presented with a contemporary modern day flourish.
Emma has exhibited widely and regularly nationally with galleries including The Jill George Gallery (Soho), Oxo Tower Wharf (London), Artsmill ( Hebden Bridge), Dean Clough (Halifax) the Huddersfield Art Gallery and at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Along with exhibiting, Emma produces work for an interior design company ‘Edward Philips’ based in London and run courses in screen-printing at the West Yorkshire Print Workshop.
