Natural Selection
Effie Burns

Wednesday 04 May - Saturday 16 June, 2022

This exhibition presents work made in the studio over the last 12 months. Effie was awarded a printmaking bursary by Northern Print to come and explore different processes within her practice.

'As the seasons unfold I find myself continually collecting things.

I live and work in Whitby and walk along the cliff paths, through parks and woodlands. I like the smell of wet grass, the pattern of pine needles on a path and the crunch of pebbles as I search for treasure on an incoming tide.

These objects collected in the landscape mark a moment in time and my work celebrates that. The process of making has become like an alternative diary documenting the places I’ve been. Each piece has a story from a sea swim at sunrise to the tiny wet leaf discovered in a TK Maxx carpark.

I began by casting natural objects in glass from acorns to pine cones-mushrooms are my current obsession. However it was during my print bursary at Northern Print that I began to explore the relationships between things. As I developed a new language of making I discovered I could create work that captures the experience of being out in the landscape. Through relief mono printing and solar print I could work with both detail and distance.

My practice is fuelled by curiosity and chance encounters. I am interested in the ability of printmaking to open up a poetic space for knowledge to exist. And how it serves as an antidote to times of chaos. It can also ask the question- what happens after we start to pay attention?'.

Effie Burns / Biography

Effie completed an MA ‘Art in Context’ and BA in ‘Glass with Ceramics’ at the University of Sunderland and established her first studio in Newcastle in 1999. She went on to set up Cobalt Studios with three other artists and has always loved making work in the Ouseburn Valley, Newcastle.

Her sculptural work has been exhibited internationally including in a contemporary gallery in Tokyo, with the Crafts Council, to a medieval castle in Germany for the prestigious Coburg Prize for Contemporary Glass 2014 and 2022.

In 2016 Effie had a Fellowship with the National Glass Centre in Sunderland and, in 2012, she was given a Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust award to develop her making skills. She currently has work on display in ‘The Art of the Exceptional’ at Fortnum & Mason, part of the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations.