Launched in 2010, Jerwood Makers Open creates a space in which to recognise and promote the significance of making practice and process within contemporary visual arts. It offers skilful makers at the early stages of their careers an opportunity to develop their creative ideas independently of specific commissioning structures. Since 2010 it has supported 19 major new commissions.

About:
Malene Hartmann Rasmussen’s mixed-media ceramic installations draw upon motifs from the domestic and natural world. Memories, daydreams and childhood nostalgia are all called upon by the artist, who weaves them together into a fairytale of her own making. The artist’s interest in the forest stems from its recurrence in European literature and myth, ancient cults, pagan rituals and as a metaphor for the hidden realms of the unconscious mind. 
Comprising a number of elaborate fragments, Rasmussen creates a tableaux of visual excess through which she seeks to evoke an emotional response in the viewer and actuate their imagination. Rasmussen is interested in the human subconscious; she strives to create a hyper-real world that addresses this gap between perception and reality. Her ornate ceramics may initially appear excessively sweet but upon closer inspection reveal themselves as impossible and absurd objects, imbued with the artist’s own dark narrative.
For Jerwood Makers Open Rasmussen has created a large scale theatrical installation, an immersive and surreal ceramic forest. Utilising the idea of Trompe l’oeil, the technique of using realistic imagery to create an optical illusion, the artist has created lifesize, scenic trees by scaling up images of hand-crafted ceramic branches. Visitors are encouraged to venture through the woods to explore a fairytale-esque space of ceramic flora, fauna and intriguing narrative scenarios

Materials: ceramics, photographic print, Wood, neon, perspex, rope
Size: height: 360 cm. width: 640 cm. depth: 750 cm. (installation)