Top 5: Unmissable artists at the Manchester School of Art degree show

As the Manchester School of Art 2022 Degree Show, titled Falling Into Place, enters its final few days, we’ve rounded up five staggeringly talented artists from different fields whose work is still available for public enjoyment.

The origins of the show’s identity follows the school tradition of approaching an alumnus for inspiration. This year, visual storyteller and 2018 Textiles in Practice graduate Daisy James developed Falling Into Place in contemplation of the disruption faced by artists during the pandemic, while celebrating the long-awaited return of studio accessibility and the human connections upon which art depends

Nikita Dhere | BA (Hons) Interior Design

Interior design finalist and ID Concepts & Development Award-winner Nikita Dhere takes an innovative approach to creating works that are ‘spatially and conceptually engaging’. Exploring how interior concepts can facilitate ethical inspiration for the benefit of society, Dhere’s degree show features powerful, functional designs marbled through with invigorating authenticity.

Chloe Watts | BA (Hons) Illustration with Animation

A designer and illustrator based in the North, Watts offers her poignant degree show in two parts: a set of prints from a series of 192 ink drawings which explore and excavate the core of her experience with mental illness, and a diverse set of 3D figures which, as the culmination of the artist’s transition from drawing to sculpting, embody Watts’ personal growth.

Jake Robinshaw | BA (Hons) Photography

Documenting the visual processes of deconstruction and reconfiguration while manipulating scale and space, Robinshaw’s series of illusions is a study of how humans relate to the objects that surround us. Using electron microscopy, the artist constructs the featured pictures with a ‘further subatomic breakdown than the [microscopes] depict’, allowing the subjects of the frame to participate in their own imaging, similar to a theatre set.

Isobelle Hayes | BA (Hons) Product Design and Craft

A natural ceramicist, Hayes’ work acts as a response to the climate crisis and considers ‘the need for immediate re-evaluation of materiality’. Having returned to the landscape where she grew up, Hayes uses hand-sourced wild clay and ancestral techniques to create a series of ceramic vessels. Sawdust-fired with native heather and bracken, the pieces encapsulate Hayes’ desire to pioneer an ethical, self-sufficient ceramics practice with deep connections to its area of material origin.

Harriet Peacock | BA (Hons) Textiles in Practice

Combining modern and traditional textile practices, Harriet Peacock’s embroidery weaves bright colours through quilting, tufting, digital printing and more to ‘showcase the elements of craft which are relevant in our evolving society’. Her degree show, a transmutation of random snapshots into tactile art, combines processes in an abstraction of modern urban life.

Photo credit: Jake Robinshaw