If we look around, we can see material; material and bodies that move across, around, over, under, and in between materials. Some materials, we can hardly see. They are so ubiquitous that they become invisible, like the glass in our windows, our eyeglasses, our telephones, the standard tiles on the walls of public spaces, or on the walls of our own, more intimate, bathrooms. Other materials emerge, like here at Konstack’s Degree Exhibition, as students want to catch your attention with the degree projects that they have worked so hard and so lovingly on. Regardless of how conscious people are of various materials, the materials all have their own origins. They have always been handled in some way – produced, dug up, cut down, boiled down, refined, packaged, transported, and reworked – which we may not think about on an everyday basis.

However, this has been a recurring theme for many of the students who are graduating from Ceramics and Glass. The students want to expose the work that bodies do with material and wish to highlight our materials – ceramics and glass – as geological, archaeological, political, and knowledge-bearing materials. Other projects use our materials to examine taste or tell us about a place, an identity, or a state of mind, to make them comprehensible to us and to themselves. Either way, completing an independently formulated degree project is a challenging task. Students must be focused and determined about what they want, while being prepared to re-evaluate everything.

Through their work, this year’s bachelor’s students demonstrate that this is possible. After three years of hard work, they have gained the knowledge, insights, abilities and skills that are needed to keep working within the field, either as a professional or as a student in a master’s programme. We look forward to following their continued careers and wish them luck and success with everything they choose to do in the future!

Sara Isaksson From
Senior Lecturer in Crafts, specialising in ceramics

Åsa Jungnelius
Senior Lecturer in Crafts, specialising in glass