Profile

Imogen is interested in the tactile and sensory experience of producing and engaging with craft. Recent work involves textile and ceramic material processes where the aim is to provoke a cognitive response from the audience. The series ‘Instruction-Response-Action’ is based on her experiences in disseminating tacit knowledge and technical instruction.

The practice of craft is often a non-discursive activity and develops bodily intelligence together with creative thinking. ‘How-to-do’ texts are particular to Textiles and Craft activity, transferring knowledge of technique and process in codes from person to person. Imogen’s work comments on how we learn craft skills and references the systems and codes of making. Her work questions the way we make things as our experiences of the material world become more abstract and the risk averse limit access to materials and tools.

Direct and explicit objects have their own particular graphic sense and semiotic reading. Here the wall mounted ceramics with textile ‘touch pads’ are described as ‘switches’ and are both explicit and ambiguous all at the same time. In the ‘Touch Series’ familiar objects from the workshop are transformed and carry a message, or mixed message, to respond to or to be drawn to act thus provoking a cognitive response from the audience.

Imogen studied BA (Hons) Textiles at Goldsmith’s College, London, graduating in 1982, and more recently specialised in Ceramics as part of a Masters Degree in Art & Design Studio Practice at Loughborough University. Her broader interest in Crafts and Design developed during a full-time career as Senior Lecturer and Course Director in the Applied Arts, Textiles and Craft at Coventry University. Imogen is currently Programme Leader for BA (Hons) Design Crafts at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.