April Dace, Leah Orford, Zoe Parry-Evans, Aelita Pliuskyte, Auguste Sniokaite and Emma Tratt exhibited as part of 'On Purpose', a project also involving students from the Department of Design at FH Dusseldorf and the MAD Faculty at Hasselt University.
The collaboration, conceived especially for the renowned Munich jewellery festival, saw each student work with a counterpart from the other schools on a piece of work exploring the notion of batch production in jewellery. Communicating digitally and overcoming language barriers, each creative team developed ideas and created items that went on show and on sale at the Messe Munchen International exhibition centre during the show.
"The challenge for the students involved was to develop ways to effectively balance their own personal visual language with those of their immediate team and, at the same time, work together as a whole group to create a single coherent show," said Tim Carson, jeweller and Joint Programme Leader of the BA Design Crafts course at Middlesex.
"Our students did a fantastic job and I was proud that their work easily stood shoulder to shoulder with the more established makers from our discipline."
April Dace, who headed up the Middlesex team, described the project as "a great experience all round."
"Although at times it was challenging to fully communicate our ideas to each other, the coherence of work produced and the way it looked on the stand is testament to how we managed to overcome this in creative effective ways," she said. "We have made some fantastic contacts during the project, all of which we are determined to keep in touch with," said fellow student Zoe Parry-Evans. "There is already talk of further collaborative projects in the future."
Top image: L-R, 'While Stocks Last' by April Dace, 'Blow' by Auguste Sniokaite, 'Dead Rat' by Emma Tratt
Bottom image: L-R, Necklace by Aelite Pliuskyte and neckpiece by Leah Orford, necklace by Aelite Pliuskyte, brooches by Zoe Parry-Evans
