Elizabeth Turrell

Senior Research Fellow: Enamelling
Research: The Centre for Fine Print Research, ETC

Elizabeth Turrell was awarded a three year Arts and Humanities Research Council Research Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts in the first round of the scheme in 1999 to investigate print in enamel. She is now a Senior Research Fellow based in the The Centre for Fine Print Research at UWE Bristol and heads up the Enamel Research Unit specializing in enamelling. One of her long-term commitments has been to promote and raise the profile of enamel. Her aim is to make enamel a more established area of the visual arts by exploring the creative potential of enamel on metal, particularly the incorporation of printed images and the development of non-traditional approaches to contemporary practice.

The Centre has expanded its capital equipment to allow the expansion of enamelling on metal on a larger scale and to create the only large-scale enamelling kiln in an academic environment in the UK. This has allowed the expansion of the School of Creative Art's public art activities led by Elizabeth and contributed to Master Classes in enamel on metal.

In 2003 Elizabeth was awarded funding from the AHRC to research the International Contemporary Vitreous Enamel Archive. A database of contemporary enamel on metal, was created, establishing a major international resource for study and research into contemporary enamel (glass on metal). To access the archive click the following link http://archives.uwe.ac.uk and enter enamel as both the Account Name and the Password.

During the past five years Elizabeth has been invited to be a visiting artist at several institutions in India: the School of Art in Bombay, the National Museum of Modern Art, New Delhi, and the Sanskriti Kendra in New Delhi. She was a Visiting Tutor on the Enamelling Programme at San Diego State University for the Spring Semester in 1988 and also at Towson State University Maryland in 1990. In 2003, she undertook a six week winter session as a visiting artist at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, USA. She has curated and coordinated several exhibitions including Print in Enamel Part 1 & 2 at Studio Fusion, the Oxo Tower in London since 1999; she has also exhibited at IMPACT, the International Multidisciplinary Printmaking Conference in Bristol in 1999, and South Africa in 2003. She was the Symposium and Workshop coordinator at the International Enamel Symposium at UWE in 2000 and in 2001 curated an exhibition entitled Contemporary Print in Enamel that was shown at the School of Art Gallery, Kent State University,USA in March 2001 followed by an exhibition at East Carolina University. She has been sole juror on numerous enameling exhibitions, for example Playing With Fire - Glass on Metal. Juried Exhibition of Enamel Works, held at San Diego Enamel Guild, USA in 2004. Elizabeth was recently invited to curate an international badge exhibition at Museum der Arbeit Hamburg, Germany which will tour internationally until 2009.

Recent commissions have included two commemorative pieces for the new building of the National Library for Women: The Fawcett Library, Guildhall University, London; three large enamel panels for the central desk at the New Library at Emerson's Green for South Gloucestershire Council and in 2004-05, a number of large scale pieces for SUSTRANS as part of their national Art and the Travelling Landscape Project. Elizabeth also completed a commission as co-ordinating artist to produce a series of vitreous enamel panels for the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children. To view the case study click here. In 2007 Elizabeth worked with Julie Verhoeven, a fashion illustrator, artist and designer to produce a high profile unique public art work for Crest Nicholson's Harbourside development in Bristol city centre. The artwork is 16 square metres of a collage of photographic images, prints and hand drawings on fired panels.

She studied at the Lowestoft School of Art in Suffolk followed by training as a ceramicist at the Central School of Art and Design in London. 25 years ago she established a highly regarded enamelling department, based on exploring non-traditional approaches, at the School of Art and Design in Bristol.

Elizabeth.Turrell@uwe.ac.uk

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