John Hinchcliffe

and purpose. The new works shown at the Crafts Study Centre were truly funto make. This is an essential ingredient for me. These constructions possessmany of the qualities of richness and spontaneity that I strove to achieve inmy early work but without the laborious processes that were involved.I should like to thank Simon Olding for offering me the exhibition at theCrafts Study Centre and, furthermore, for writing this story of my work;also Tom and Kuljit Singh for sponsoring the exhibition, thus giving me theopportunity to explore my ideas more freely than might otherwise have beenpossible. I am grateful to Andrew and Vicky Booth and Michael Woodhousefor providing much needed overflow studio space. Finally I should like tothank my wife, Wendy Barber, for her unfailing support of my work.John HinchcliffeDewlish, Dorset2006John Hinchcliffe: weaverArundel, West Sussex 1973 to 1980The artistic career of John Hinchcliffe has encompassed several roles andembraced diverse media. He has enjoyed acclaim as a weaver; achieved successas a designer and maker of studio and commercial ceramics, as well as printedtextiles. Latterly he has worked in the fields of painting and linocuts. Thisversatility of expression and the range of audiences addressed by Hinchcliffe’swork have set a groundbreaking example in British crafts. In his most recentwork, he has emerged as the experimental maker still fascinated by colourand texture in surface decoration.This publication marks a major one-person exhibition held at the CraftsStudy Centre, University College for the Creative Arts at Farnham, in 2006.A bold array of new works was produced for this show, modestly titled JohnHinchcliffe: recent work. Paper strips, felt, ceramics and industrial materialswere utilised in innovative arrangements to demonstrate a lifetime’s creativeobsession with decoration and surface patterning. The outcome of twoyears of intense consideration and research, it is the most abstract of hiscreative statements. The hallmarks of Hinchcliffe’s work came to fruitionin the exhibition: rigorous determination; self confidence and the joy ofmanipulating swathes of colour into complex forms. But they were presentfrom the outset.John Hinchcliffe (born 1949 in Chichester) quickly established aninternational reputation as a textile artist in the 1970s. His earliest trainingwas at the West Sussex College of Art and Design in Worthing in a one yearfoundation course (1967-68). This course emphasised design and pattern J o h n H i n c h c l i f f e J o h n H i n c h c l i f f e