Celebrating the launch of our open call for Stanley Picker Fellowships 2020, the theme for this week is Creative Processes.

Since they were initiated in 1977, the Stanley Picker Fellowships have supported diverse artists and designers through many different kinds of creative processes, from filmmaking to product design. Giving practitioners the valuable time, support and resources to deliver an ambitious research project, our Fellowship commissions offer a broad portfolio of exciting, risk-taking projects at the forefront of contemporary art and design. Browse our Fellowships archive and find out how to apply here.

Designer Michael Marriott’s own Fellowship exhibition “You say Volvo, I say Potato…” investigated alternative means of marking and colouring plywood with manual processes, such as potato printing. It’s title a play on the popular Gershwin song Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off (1937), Marriott created a new body of work substituting a potato for a Volvo as his printing tool. Pieces of machined metal work from the engine and other parts were utilised by Marriott as printing ‘plates’, with ink made from the exhaust soot and sump oil recovered from car. The sulphur yellow body shell of the Volvo was mounted vertically at the centre of the Gallery. Read more about the project in Disegno Magazine here and watch a video about Marriott’s creative process here.

Throughout the exhibition, many of our community partners enjoyed printmaking workshops, including The Grange who recently exhibited the results of their workshop, and Grey Court School who applied the same creative process to an old upright piano which they dismantled and made prints with.

Inspired by Michael Marriott’s ‘”You say Volvo, I say Potato…”, our Museum & Gallery Assistant Zainab has been experimenting with different ways of printing from home this week. Watch her youtube tutorial on Potato Printing, or download her PDF instructions to Printing with Found Objects or Linoprinting to try something different!

Share your results on social media by tagging us on Instagram @stanleypicker or Twitter @pickergallery or by sending us your images to stanleypickergallery@kingston.ac.uk to show us your work.

Zainab Sanyang is an illustrator, educator and 3rd year Illustration Animation student at Kingston School of Art. She leads the Saturday Art Club at Stanley Picker Gallery for local children.