Rosalyn Driscoll
Driscoll's work explores the languages of the body and the senses, focusing on the dynamic relationship between touch and sight. Many of her sculptures are made to be touched or to evoke the feeling of touching. Touch reveals a new realm of meaning and a profoundly different way of knowing than seeing. As someone said, "When you look it's an object, but when you touch, it's a journey."
The sculptures range from small enough to hold to large enough to walk inside, whether literally or imaginatively. They are constructions using a variety of sensuous materials rich in tactile appeal and expressive qualities. They explore tensions between inside and outside, organic and industrial, protection and vulnerability, primitive and cyborg.
Through her fascination with perception Driscoll engages with neuroscientists, engineers, psychologists, philosophers, educators, art historians, artists, designers and people involved with disabilities. She is currently writing a book, By the Light of the Body: Touch in the Visual Arts.
Bonnie Kemske comes to her sculptural work with a diverse arts background. As a young woman she trained in modern dance and ballet in New York City. This training and the sense of body awareness gained from it have been a consistent aesthetic influence throughout her life.
Bonnie Kemske says: Like when reading old personal journals, you find that the issues that make you who you are recur, but through different stories and with different answers. Touch, tactility, and the body are thematic threads of my experience, and my work gives me the opportunity to contribute to an understanding of these issues by challenging our pre-conceptions and moving forward through the creation of new tactile experiences.www.bonniekemske.com
Katie Gaudion - Textiles, Royal College of Art
Katie graduated in 2002 with a First Class BA (Hons) in Textiles Design with Business Studies at The University of Brighton. During that time she chose to work with two companies in India who specialize in hand-weaving and wood-block printing. This then lead her to conduct a research trip to South America exploring textiles, costume and festivals, funded with a Travel Bursary awarded by The Royal Society of Arts.
Katie's career to date has involved a variety of freelance contracts, most notably fabrication at Jim Henson's Creature Shop, wig and hair insertion at Madame Tussauds Studio and design roles within the events industry. Her ongoing involvement with the charity FACT (Federation for Artistic and Creative Therapy) has been a major inspiration for her research at the RCA. Katie is currently researching the development of therapeutic and interactive textiles structures, to encourage haptic and proprioceptive response for the service-users of multi-sensory environments, at the RCA, as part of her Mphil / PhD.
Tereza Stehlikova - Moving Image / Animation, Royal College of Art
Tereza Stehlíková works as an artist, filmmaker, writer and an associate lecturer in animation. She co-edits Artesian, a bi-annual journal concerned with creativity in art and life, published by Go Together Press. Her films have been shown in various international film festivals. Other moving image work includes Fingertips, a collaboration with experimental musician Philip Jeck, resulting in a projection for live performance, and Golden Well with Jon Wozencroft, a video installation in Silo space, Porto.
Tereza's illustrated book for children, The Story of Violet, was published in 2007. Her short stories, reviews and illustrations have been published in Vertigo magazine and FO A RM (New York). Tereza graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Animation in 2001, and she returned there in 2008, researching the tactile language of the moving image as part of a practice-based PhD.
Anais Tondeur
Anais Tondeur works at the interface of design and art, writing and filmmaking. She is French but lives between Paris and London. She looks for interstices where to 'bend the line'('plier la ligne'). This French expression defines the artistic gesture as one which invents a place. These spaces become folds; torsions which allow the existence of a project.
She develops narrative structures that are considered as means to fictionalize the real in order to reflect upon it. The pieces encourage the spectator to interact and engage actively in the production of meaning.
Her textile design work is lead by a passion for textural print and colour combinations. She is currently working as a freelancer for new York based fashion companies and was awarded prizes by Interior companies as John Lewis (London), LG HAUSYS Interior ( Korea) or WGSN Trend Forecasting studio(London).