The must-see craft exhibitions of 2024
Fill those fresh diary pages with top craft exhibitions happening across the UK
The Glass Heart: Art, Industry and Collaboration
The stunning stained-glass window within Two Temple Place was surely the inspiration to show a collection of arresting glass art at the museum this year. The exhibition, curated by Antonia Harrison, brings together works from across the UK to celebrate 170 years of glassmaking. Among the contemporary makers are Chris Day, Pinkie Maclure, and Louis Thompson.
27 January – 21 April 2024 at Two Temple Place, London
Clay is My Canvas
Curated by Nick Duxbury, this exhibition gathers ceramic artists that use painterly techniques to give their work an expressive visual language. Following on from Italian Renaissance-era maiolica and the painted ceramics of Picasso and Marc Chagall, the selected artists show how they use different techniques to move seamlessly between clay, canvas and other media.
20 January – 7 April 2024 at New Brewery Arts, Cirencester
Yinka Shonibare
It’s set to be a packed year for Yinka Shonibare, who will be contributing to the Nigerian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and showing work in this self-titled solo exhibition at the Serpentine. Expect explorations of cultural identity and post-colonialism through sculptures, quilts, woodcuts and the batik fabric he is best known for. The show will also include installations on the theme of boundaries ‘whether psychological, physical or geographical’.
Feliciano Centurión, Eye with ñanduti c.1994, from La Mirada [the Gazing Eye series] Courtesy Cecilia Brunson Projects and Familia Feliciano Centurión Hannah Ryggen, Blood in the Grass, 1966 © Hannah Ryggen / DACS 2023 Photo: Kode / Dag Fosse
Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art
Textiles as a form of political resistance is the subject of this major survey at London’s Barbican, comprising over 100 artworks from names such as Magdalena Abakanowicz, Igshaan Adams, Feliciano Centurión, Sheila Hicks. Look out for the stark anti-fascist tapestries of Hannah Ryggen, made in the 1960s from wool and foraged materials from her rural Norwegian farm.
13 February – 26 May 2024 at Barbican Art Gallery, London
Frieda Toranzo Jaeger
Mexico City-based artist Frieda Toranzo Jaeger works with her family to create richly embroidered panels that explore a future beyond capitalism and colonialism. She employs painting and indigenous craft techniques to create images of femininity and foliage, mixed with icons of corporate power such as cars, engines and spacecraft.
16 March – 2 June 2024 at Modern Art Oxford, Oxford
PULP: A Celebration of Paper in its Widest Uses
Paper is a material that continues to enchant – as proven by this exhibition of 30 artists doing wonderfully creative things with the medium. From miniature worlds that amaze with their precision, to works of incredible texture that evoke flowers and feathers, the show will include all manner of ways paper can be cut, folded and fashioned into other forms.
Outi Pieski, Guržot ja guovssat / Spell on you!, 2020. Installation view, 23rd Biennale of Sydney, rīvus, 2022. © Document Photography Outi Pieski, Lossa máttaráhkku/ The Heavy Weight of the Foremother, 2021. © The artist. Photo: Tor Simen Ulstein / KUNSTDOK
Outi Pieski
Sámi visual artist Outi Pieski uses wood, textile and the traditional craft practices of her people to create works that make connections between past and future generations. In this first major showing of her work in the UK, we’re looking forward to experiencing her large-scale installations of colourful shawl tassels, which reference the landscape and atmosphere of her native Finland.
10 February – 6 May 2024 at Tate St Ives, St Ives
Art Without Heroes: Mingei
This large-scale celebration of Mingei (a folk-art movement from 1920s and 30s Japan) will bring 80 works in ceramic, paper, wood and textile to the UK, including kokeshi dolls, kimono and examples of sashiko stitching. The show will also widen the traditional scope of the movement to look at Korean, Okinawan and Ainu objects too, and consider the impact that Mingei has had on makers today.
23 March – 22 September 2024 at William Morris Gallery, London
Sukaina Kubba
Industrial and packaging materials often appear in the work of Iraqi-Canadian artist Sukaina Kubba, who's fascinated by nomadic textiles and intercultural histories. Her exhibition at DCA Kubba will focus on the dissemination of cross-Atlantic fabrics, presenting everything from ocean-liner rugs to lace curtains and fishing nets.
27 April – 4 August 2024 at Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee
