London Design Festival 2014: experimental footwear, furniture and jewellery pieces by a selection of emerging designers feature in the Future Stars? exhibition at London's The Aram Gallery (+ slideshow).
The exhibition, curated by Héloïse Parke, forms part of The Aram Gallery's 50-year anniversary celebrations, and includes work by Maria Jeglinska, Lola Lely, Cat Potter, James Shaw, Sophie Thomas, Thor ter Kulve and Kim Thome.
"We think these designers show a particularly fresh approach and hope they will go on to become future stars," said a spokesperson for the gallery. "Together they suggest a current moment in contemporary design in which designers strive to establish their studios by carving a unique path."
Among the designers, Maria Jeglinska has two projects in the exhibition. The Little Black is an outdoor furniture collection, inspired by 1950s Warsaw cafes - "mała czarna" is the Polish nickname for coffee which translates as "the little black" - made from painted steel tube and wire.
Drawn Objects is a collection of hand painted wooden objects. "On industrial projects the tools and processes we use allow us to predict every millimetre of the object," said Jeglinska. "Here the manual skills of the wood-turner and my hand-painting skills determine the final quality of the object."
Cat Potter's work centres around shoes. Pernilla is a series of sculptural forms made of walnut, sapele, acrylic and brass in response to highly accurate 3D scans of the contours of the foot.
Potter's Freja footwear collection is made from Corian and architectural foam in collaboration with manufacturer DuPont, using its new DeepColour Technology that claims to offer "deeper, more intense and durable colour, improved wear performance and easier thermoforming, seaming and finishing".
Layer Screens by Kim Thome are room dividers made of two layers of glass with diffusion lighting gels sandwiched between them.
"The graphic aesthetic came through experimenting with lighting gels and the way they can be used to create new colours or depths of colour by layering them," said Thome. “The lighting gels are usually used with artificial lighting to create a fake environment whereas these screens use daylight highlight the opacity of the layered gels. The gels are all hand cut and held between two glass sheets in a bespoke framework.”
Light Array, also by Thome, is a site-specific installation, using an existing plastic window combined with strip lighting and colour, to create a merged canvas.
Future Stars? opened during this year's London Design Festival and continues until 25 October at The Aram Gallery – an independently curated space that encourages and promotes understanding of contemporary design run by London furniture store Aram.