Abbie is shown with her hair tied up and with brown curls falling around her face, she wears tortoiseshell framed glasses and has a nose ring in, she wears an orange strappy top in an art studio environment. There are various shots throughout that show Abbie in her workshop with large ceramic hares and stags she is working on as well as external shots of the University of Derby's Britannia Mill site and Banks Mill Studios. Artcore's building in Derby city centre is also shown, both from the outside and inside, to showcase the venue.
Abbie: Hi, my name is Abbie Sunter, I'm a ceramic artist. I first came to Derby University in 2010 to study the BA (Hons) Fine Art course. Even though I enjoyed working with ceramics as a material, I was still at that time exploring other mediums and what I felt like I was capable of doing as an artist. When I came and looked around the facilities,
I thought, you know, they've got all the photography facilities, they've got ceramics, printmaking, textiles, metalwork, woodwork and there was, you know, the opportunity to work in so many different things and I really enjoyed my BA but even though, you know, I played with all the different materials, ceramics was the thing that I just I kept circling back to, it's just what I got the most enjoyment out of, and I just loved working with it. So I had a really long break actually between my BA and my MA, but had found myself thinking you know, I really want to further my professional practice now. I'd kind of been working commercially as an artist, which had been really successful, but I wanted to, you know, see if there was a way to expand that commercial practice into more of a contemporary art area. So coming back to do my MA at Derby just felt like the right place and time. I'd had my studio at Banks Mill, which is, another part of the University of Derby, which is an incubation hub for people who are at the beginning of their creative practices. So it just made so much sense for me to have my studio at Banks Mill and then be able to walk five minutes down the road and come to university. It was everything and more than I could have hoped for, and that I got that of coming back to do my MA at that time. The MA Show was, was amazing, and I was really happy that I got to create a body of work that was, you know, based in ceramics, even though it was an MA Art course it really allowed me to really sit into that material. So then showing at Artcore which, you know, originally started as a ceramics gallery in India. The timings and everything worked really well and you know, obviously, the work had an impact on them and they were impressed by it, which was amazing. So being offered the the Emerging Artist Award with Artcore and then this opportunity to do the residency with them was fantastic. And it's just another thing that, you know, I don't think I would have got that another university, that opportunity to continue to work and show my work in a public sphere and get that support all the way from my MA into now, my professional practice.
Professor Katharine Cox has short brown hair and wears a navy jacket with gold chain. Katharine is sitting at our Markeaton Street site in a corridor with classrooms behind her. A group of people are shown sitting around a long table taking part in a clay making workshop at Derby Market Hall.
Katharine: It's great working with Artcore, we've traditionally had our MA Degree Show in the city at their venue, which is just close to the Derby Market Hall. It's a brilliant first step for our students taking themselves out of the university and into the city space, to be part of the community that we're within, as a university, really giving back to the city and ensuring that our students are making those steps towards becoming professional artists for those who do continue along that path. Abbie Sunter is a fantastic
example of that. So it's fabulous to see the journey that she's on.
Ruchita Shaikh has long brown straight hair and wears black framed glasses and a smart white jacket. Ruchita is filmed in an office and Abbie and Vinod are shown in a studio laughing and discussing their clay making.
Ruchita: Samvāda in Clay is a residency and an exhibition, of two artists, highly acclaimed Indian artist, Vinod Daroz, and, Abbie Sunter, who is a double graduate from University of Derby. The thing they have both in common is they both worK in clay. And Samvāda in Clay means a dialogue, a conversation in clay, and it's interesting to see, the two coming together, working in the similar medium, still having quite different practices and having their exhibition here at Artcore.
Katharine: It's incredible then to see these kind of connections through Artcore from her local practice, but really putting her on the stage with international artists. We hope as well that she's going to be an inspiration for our current students and future students. So it was lovely to welcome her back to the university for this project. We work very closely with industry across engineering, across technology, but also in an artistic sense as well. So we invite professionals into the university, they set live briefs for our students. We also take our students out into our local communities, and particularly the work with Artcore and having Vinod as a visiting fellow to the university is a practice that we're looking to to continue so that we're able to welcome in different artists onto our courses, in fine art, in photography, so that students are learning from the very best and they're learning from international practice as well as our more local and kind of community based settings.
Abbie and Vinod are shown sitting together on the floor at the Artcore exhibition they collaborated at and some clips are shown of the two of them independently working on their own clay projects in workshops.
Abbie: I think for me, the conversations that I would hope that people get from this exhibition, you know, when they come and see it is, you know, the difference in how we've used the material because like you say, even though it's, you know, we're using the same things and the same processes for, for a lot of them, you know, we have totally different outcomes and I think it's really interesting for people to see that ceramics or pottery isn't just one thing. It can be completely different.
Vinod: We actually give clay, it's just clay, and we're giving the different dimension, different shape, and now we're like gods. That's what, in India, we call it, Prajapati. Prajapati means, God. Oh, wow, yeah, I like that, that's real cool.
The Artcore and University of Derby logos are shown in white on a black background to end the video.
'MA Arts Alumni Abbie Sunter collaborates with the visual arts charity Artcore' video
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