Design students take a creative leap

The future is looking bright for postgraduate art and design students who are about to exhibit their work.

MA Art and Design students are showing their work in a free exhibition called Leap, which is open to the public from September 24 to 26, from 10.00am to 5.00pm, in the Phoenix Building, on the corner of Stephenson Street and Woodlands Road.

The graduates are from a range of specialist backgrounds including Fine Art, Photography, Product Design, Interior Architecture, Graphic Arts and Design and Interior Design. The Leap exhibition features everything from web-based animation to eco-friendly lighting created from plastic bottles.

Sculptural lighting installations MA students Joanne Riddle and Ondrej Lewis collaborated to create the EcoPETlite concept, a series of sculptural lighting installations created by transforming plastic bottles. They joined forces during their postgraduate year.

Joanne, from Stockton, graduated from Teesside in 1999 with an International Textiles and Surface Pattern degree and Ondrej, who is from the Czech Republic, was a 2007 graduate in Interior Architecture and Design. They have produced an innovative range of products, including a two-metre high chandelier The Thirteenth Row, created from plastic bottles.

Their collaboration has already been recognised by prestigious publications such as Design Week and they have exhibited in the 100% Futures event held at Earls Court in London.

Other exhibitors include Roger Shaw, who studied Interior Design and Victoria Staples, who works at Middlesbrough art gallery mima. Her work focuses on the use of portable exhibition spaces.

Roger, from Stockton, said of his work, The Interative CCTV Bench: ‘It has been inspirational working towards something which involves the use of interactive displays, cameras, lighting and sound effects.’

Exhibition is a celebration Programme leader Michael Hall, said: ‘This exhibition is a celebration of an intense period of study and experimentation by a group of talented and determined individuals. The creativity and originality shown will be leading to some very exciting future projects and innovations. We hope that this exhibition will stimulate dialogue and action, encouraging new collaborations, new ideas and initiatives to emerge.’

From October we are offering new courses including MA Future Arts and MA Future Design, which will see students looking at art, design and technology and developing their ability to foresee new directions and new markets for their work.

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