Mint Explores with the London Design Festival 2011.

Dear Readers,

Autumn is here and once again we are delighted to participate in the London Design Festival. This year, our exhibition titled Mint Explores will be unveiling the mysteries of human perception and how it does not necessarily relate to reality.

Mint Explores will be featuring the inspiring works of 60 carefully selected international artists. Here is a little sneak peek of what is in store for you!

Maarten De Cuelaer

Maarten De Cuelaer’s Balloon Bowls, as the name suggests, are created with the use balloons and strong synthetic plaster. The colorants, which are added to the water prior to mixing it with the plaster powder, emerge differently each time, creating uncontrolled and often spectacular color patterns. The project is all about serendipity; the parameters that influence the process are known, but still the result is always a guess and never turns out exactly the way you expect.

Please click to watch the video of the process

Silvia Knüppel

Silvia Knüppel’s Drückeberger Small Cabinet embodies pseudo-Baroque decorative excesses in a very sophisticated and highly contemporary interpretation. The art piece is a massive block of foam, which acts as a blank receptacle for all kinds of household goods. In a very unconventional and original way, Knüppel has inserted simple slashes into the foam into which any object, such as clothes or books, may be inserted.

Kari Furre

Kari Furre, a sculptor and fabricator for many years, is drawn to processes that involve the body as well as the mind. Her Fish Skin Bowls are made from tanned cod and plaice skin, a tanning formula that retains the translucency of the skin. The bowls are formed in a mould but have a sprung wire rim to keep their shape. Her inspiration to create the Fish Skin Bowls came from the sea as she is a swimmer. On her visit to Iceland she discovered fish leather and realised that fish skin is usually wastefully discarded by fish processing plants in other countries.

Amba Molly

Amba Molly explores the process of human cell division with her Mitose collection of 5 ceramic pieces. She began this process with four products from the contrasting eras of the industrial and the traditional. By using a plastic bottle, an old earthenware oil pitcher, a plastic Tupperware can and a hand-twisted earthenware can, she divided the moulds systematically to form 60 stones. After four stages of division, the products further integrated themselves and eventually materialized into a new unique entity.

Maaike Seegers

Maaike Seegers believes that the process of making tableware is as interesting as the end product. In her Meltware Collection, process and product collide; stoneware carafe, bowl and spoon are not just pieces of tableware but also act as moulds themselves. These have been used with Carnauba wax, a natural hard waterproof and reusable material extracted from the leafs of the Carnauba palm tree, to produce a selection of wax coloured tableware, miniatures of the originals.