11 craft exhibitions to see in the UK this April

31 March 2022

Unmissable shows

31 March 2022

Exhibitions

Escalade Beyond Chromatic Lands by Sheila Hicks. Photo: Michael Brzezinski, courtesy Sheila Hicks

Need a new spring in your step? Get inspired with our edit of this season's most exciting craft shows.

Sheila Hicks: Off Grid

This major exhibition at the Hepworth Wakefield spotlights the work of Sheila Hicks, one of the world’s best-known artists working with textiles, who has long strived to collapse the boundaries between craft, art and architecture through monumental works made of fibre and found materials. The show spans the artist’s entire career from 1950s to the present day.

7 April to 25 September at the Hepworth Wakefield

Gaining Ground

Curator Ligaya Salazar is turning the Crafts Council Gallery into a library of indigenous knowledge, celebrating making processes that work in symbiosis with nature. The exhibition explores work by artisans from Bangladesh, the Philippines, India, Argentina, Nicaragua, Guyana, Brazil, Indonesia, and elsewhere.

13 April to 25 June at the Crafts Council Gallery, London

Do It Yourself?

This unusual exhibition at Derby's Museum of Making in partnership with the BBC explores the past, present and future of DIY. Highlights include television archive footage ranging from the Chuckle Brothers to DIY SOS, plus opportunities to get hands-on with a medal-making station and more.

8 April to September at the Museum of Making, Derby

Mina El Shourouk ila Al Fahmah by Mounira al Solh, 2019. Photo: courtesy Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg

A day is as long as a year

The Lebanese artist Mounira Al Solh creates large embroideries and paintings exploring themes of migration and memory. For this solo show for the Baltic in Gateshead, she worked with women’s groups to sew and embroider an enormous tent covered in personal stories. In the March/April issue of Crafts magazine, she explains the project: ‘Each person embroidered birds, flowers, leaves and their signature; everyone has their own ‘handwriting’ you can see in their stitches.’

From 9 April to 2 October at the Baltic, Gateshead

Migrant Makers Market

Not an exhibition, but a shop and makerspace opening in London on 9 April, dedicated exclusively to selling products from migrant-owned businesses and creators. The Market will occupy Lewisham Shopping Centre for 12 months, selling everything from jewellery and fashion to food and homeware. Look out for the programme of free workshops led by migrant entrepreneurs, too.

From 9 April at Lewisham Shopping Centre, London

Celia Pym at work darning clothes in her London studio. Photo: courtesy Harewood House Biennial

Harewood Biennial: Radical Acts

How can craft change the world for the better? The new edition of the Harewood House Biennial pivots around this question. For Radical Acts: Why Craft Matters, curator Hugo Macdonald has chosen 16 artists and designers whose work will fill the grand interiors and rolling grounds of the 18th-century Yorkshire house.

Until 29 August at Harewood House, Leeds

In The Round

This group exhibition at Unit London in Hanover Square focuses on ceramic sculpture, featuring work such as AnneMarie Laureys’ abstract assemblages, Alma Berrow’s playful, Pop Art-inspired models of cigarette-strewn ashtrays and Henry Hudson’s dark, brooding vessels.

Until 23 April at Unit London

Artful Craft

This exhibition at MAKE Southwest (the crafts education charity formerly known as the Devon Guild of Craftsmen) features a mix of artists who blend fine art with traditional craft processes – from embroidered hyperrealist sculptures of lichen, to bronze bells made with both digital and analogue tools.

2 April to 2 July at MAKE Southwest, Bovey Tracey

Ceramic Art London

The annual event covering all things clay is back at London’s Central Saint Martins, following a pandemic-induced hiatus. Alongside work for sale by over 90 potters and artists, look out for the ClayTalks series of in-person discussions and the satellite exhibition On Air, which explores ceramic responses to air pollution.

8 to 10 April at Central Saint Martins, London

Althea Mcnish in the 1970s. Photo credit Bill Patterson. Courtesy N15 Archive
Golden Harvest by Althea McNish for Hull Traders, c.1960s. Photo

Althea McNish: Colour is Mine

‘Whenever printers told me it couldn’t be done, I would show them how to do it,’ said Althea McNish. The late textile artist, who upturned the staid conventions of British postwar design, is the subject of a new show at the William Morris Gallery. Drawing on extensive new research and the artist’s personal archive, this exhibition traces her life and career – from the influence of her upbringing in Trinidad to her work for Liberty.

2 April to 26 June at the William Morris Gallery, London

Richard McVetis: Shaped by Time

In his minutely detailed, hand-embroidered work, the London-based artist Richard McVetis explores the making of space and the marking of time. See it up close in his solo show at the Crafts Study Centre in the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham.

5 April to 30 July at Crafts Study Centre, Farnham

11 craft exhibitions to see in the UK this April

Read more

How textile designer Althea McNish brought post-war London to life

Highlights from the Harewood Biennial