An exhibition inspired by storytelling
Artist Mel Davis is joined by jewellery and metal artists Emma White, Charlotte Whitmore, Helena Russell and Evie Milo.
Opening night is Friday 2nd November.
Join us between 6-9pm to celebrate the 50th exhibition in the Sunny Bank Mills Gallery.
Every Picture Tells a Story features new work from Mel Davies, Emma White, Charlotte Whitmore, Helena Russell and myself. A fantastic riot of colour and then subtle silver tones, little letters and full dialogues, vintage fantastic plastics married with silver flowers and amazing raised metal vessels, drawn up out of sheet metal and transformed into something beautiful and yet still raw. It’s going to be rather marvellous.
About Mel Davies:
Mel Davies is a well known and well loved local painter, who’s distinctive bright palette and wonderful characters, jump from the walls and fill the room with their fun and exuberance. He works from his studio in Sunny Bank Mills, this will be Mel’s 8th show at the gallery and he will be showing a multitude of paintings from the last year, selected carefully from his large body of work.
About Emma White:
Emma White is a local Jewellery Maker, working in silver and gold on handmade designs and commissions for private customers. Emma is fascinated by the stories that her customers bring to her and her work is centred around celebrating and immortalising those stories. This show includes the tales of new love, children born, people lost, hope after tragedy. The jewellery, mainly necklaces and bangles, are made from long ribbons of silver wire which have been stamped with tiny little letters, each only 1mm tall. Each letter is stamped one by one until a story is formed, some of the larger pieces are a meter long before they are curled to become jewellery. The silver wire ‘ribbon’ is then twisted into a ‘tangled tale’, a knotted design, a spiral, a twist. Each becomes a piece of history which will carry those stories forward even after we have all gone.
About Charlotte Whitmore:
Charlotte makes her vibrant and colourful mixed media jewellery in her small workshop in West Yorkshire. Her designs are silver, incorporating colour from vintage plastics (Bakelite, Casein, Lucite) and vintage glass. She uses traditional jewellery techniques and vintage tools to make marks into the metal, creating unusual patterns and textures. Inspiration comes from tall, waving grasses, delicate wild flowers and sculptural seed heads found in the hedgerows and along the towpaths near her workshop.
About Helena Russell:
Helena is a Sheffield based metalsmith who designs and makes work which all have the aim to encourage interaction whether that is through the finish, shape or use of the object. Dissimilarity is a collection of copper vessels that explore the different finishes caused during a process called patination, a technique that uses a range of different chemical mixtures and ways of applying that effect the surface of the metal. Each piece has been polished on the inside to create a contrast to the patina and to allow the natural copper colour, this also appears to let the piece illuminate from the inside.
About Me:
Also showing is Emma’s colleague and fellow Jewellery Maker, Evie Milo, master recycler and talented designer in a number of mediums. Evie is showing a series of freestanding typeface letters, from flattened copper plumbing pipes, spelling out well known Yorkshire phrases from her hometown of Leeds.
Look our for ‘JAMMY GIT’, ‘EY UP LASS’ and ‘FLIPPIN ECK’ or even commission your own special phrase.