MA Contemporary Crafts Graduate Showcase 2026: The artists

All the artists exhibiting are presenting the final project in their MA in Contemporary Crafts from Hereford College of Arts. The six artists represent the breadth of the subject area, having developed and refined their own critical and technical approaches to contemporary craft through the 15-month course.

You can view all the work featured below in person at the 2026 MA Show - Contemporary Crafts in January.

Perihelia is a Latin astronomical term for the closest point of orbit of stars, planets, and asteroids to the sun. The project focusses on 17th century Art-Science works of Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673), polymath, philosopher, scientist and playwright; the first female recorded astronomer, Maria Clara Eimmart (1676-1707); and Susanna Lister (1670-1738) and her sister Anna (1671-1700), naturalists and scientific illustrators.

By using surface pattern on objects associated with the decorative and domestic sphere, I commemorate women in history overlooked by the dominant patriarchal narrative. Digital drawing, made and found ceramics, textiles, wallpaper, acid-etched metals and engraved glass are employed to realise the missing artefacts of an imagined matriarchal society.

Theories and methodologies relating to feminist history/archaeology, the imagined speculative narrative, and domestic material culture, have reinforced my primary intentions, project materials and processes for the project.

I aim to continue this work with the planned long-term project, Vivat Matriarchia (Long Live the Matriarchy), which will focus on further periods of women’s history.

Steph Avery-Reynolds has worked for over twenty years in arts facilitation as a freelance community artist in Kent, England. Her work includes public murals and sculpture, outreach workshops in schools and community centres. She was commissioned by Canterbury Festival to devise and deliver workshops county-wide, and has been artist-in-residence for several Kent schools.

Since moving to Powys, Wales in 2023, Steph has concentrated solely on her personal art practice and project research.

My three craftworks explore these questions through the use of endangered heritage craft processes to create three ‘tools’. 

The Kishie, a grass back-basket, was made as a tool to carry belonging and heritage. The Island Chair is made as a tool for pause and rest.  Lastly, The Tablecloth is made as a tool of connection and to illustrate our need for community. 

These vernacular-built craftworks were made from knowledge of my surrounding landscape and self-gleaned materials. Fully agreeing with thatcher Brian Wilson, that, “to go through life surrounded by these wonderful, freely-available materials and not know how to use them is to miss out on a great deal of what it means to be alive in the world.” 

My practice investigates how craft can awaken and realise human flourishing. Asking the question: What truly constitutes human flourishing, and can it be quickened by craft, through the act of a craft practice and through the use of craft objects themselves?

In this exhibition I present Ocean, an ornate wall memorial of sculpted lime plaster shells and marine life around a mirror and Forest, a fresco and egg tempera altarpiece painting of native woodland species. Using natural materials and processes, these works grieve loss of habitats, celebrate what remains and inspire a renewed sense of connection to wild environments. 

Though appropriation of memento-mori and vanitas forms I advocate for nature and highlight our entanglement with it. The natural, biogenic ingredients and vivid pigments of ancient material processes are a perfect vehicle to deliver the themes, symbols and exquisitely observed detail of memento-mori art, enabling me to explore and communicate connotations of transience, materiality and existential threat in the Anthropocene.

Trained in the heritage crafts of fresco painting and stucco modelling, Cara uses these techniques as an environmental artist to make fine art for exhibition and decorative installations for interiors.

My project focused on connection through The Community Shawl and Rosettes collaborative projects and my personal narrative project, expressed through the creation of ‘Atai’s Shawl’; this second shawl narrates my own journey through both dark and light. These projects enabled ways to find and express our voices, through exploring the resilience of human character and examining how engaging with creativity promotes and maintains our wellbeing. By reflecting on the themes of community (safety, belonging, inspiration), participants were able to discover and reflect upon solace and resilience, and become part of a wider community.

In my projects the sensorimotor grounding of abstract ideas is achieved through the use of textiles and their material properties, both processes and the creative outcomes, and in so doing, engaging with acknowledging the difficult and celebrating the joyous, pivotal moments in both community and personal narratives. This is demonstrated using cloth and the symbology of the Welsh Shawl ~ warmth, safety, belonging, home, and through commemorative and celebratory rosettes. The works created explore the healing modalities of cloth and each address, from different perspectives, the social, political, and restorative aspects of expressing our narratives and finding our resilience through creative practices.

The basis of Emma's creative practice is connection. This is realised through enablement (coordinating and facilitating community projects) and engagement with materials.

In Transforming Identities I am sketching stories with pen and with thread. Welsh wool blankets, black bin bags, and an assemblage of natural objects are combined through stitching symbols and pattern to make heirloom quilts that make visible a journey through the care system and create a sense of home. Care experienced children and adults are often given their story by others, in files and care records tied up in a black bin bag of possessions; rescripting our stories can give us agency to unpack and transform our bin bags into objects of security and value. 

Sustainability is integral to my practice; reimagining materials that carry traces of a former life or function, offering them the opportunity to tell new stories. Combining my love of cloth and stitch with my connection to the natural environment I bring together a variety of found, made and altered materials.  Using techniques commonly applied to textiles I transform them into carriers of a different narrative; becoming objects that tell the wild stories of foraged nature alongside the domestic and comforting stories embedded within collected remnants of used fabrics and yarns.

For my project, I have created 600 porcelain snails from real shells and built a life-sized, needle-felted doll’s house. Working at these two scales allows me to reflect on domestic space and childhood memories, exploring how familiar objects can subtly change when reimagined.

My process is deliberately slow and intensely physical. I perform the same gestures daily, pouring slip, trimming casts, shaping felt, brushing on gesso, and sealing with wax. These rhythmic actions encourage reflection, allowing my hands to anticipate my thoughts or catch up with them. Influenced by phenomenology and embodied cognition, I am fascinated by the idea that we understand the world through movement and touch just as much as through language.

My practice stems from close, hands-on engagement with materials and the memories they hold. I am drawn to porcelain, wool, gesso, and wax for their sensitivity to touch and their capacity to capture every subtle mark, pressure, and pause.