MullenLowe has revealed the shortlist for the 2023 MullenLowe NOVA Awards and opened voting for the NOVA ‘People’s Choice’ Award!
From using human hair waste to create personalised prostheses to heart-warming animations and culture-rich craftsmanship, these stand-out projects showcase the very best of emerging talent who are pushing the boundaries of creativity in response to the world around us. From 1,300 Central Saint Martins graduating students, 52 were nominated and just 14 have been selected by the NOVA award panel of expert judges.
The 14 graduating student Shortlist:
Annette Levin, I’M A VICTIM OF THIS SONG, BA Textile Design
‘I’M A VICTIM OF THIS SONG’ is a multi-faceted textiles project that aims to challenge the way its viewers perceive femininity. The four-act play documents the inner monologue of a protagonist reflecting on feminine absurdity, surrealism and joy.
Paying homage to the works of Pipliotti Rist, Kiki Smith, Francesca Woodman and David Wojnarowicz, each act is inspired by different contemporary movies, art pieces and photographs that have dynamically captured different aspects of femininity.
My project places femininity in an isolated environment, away from comparisons and responsibilities, and centres on the thrill, absurdity and silliness that femininity can bring.
Find out more on Annette’s project HERE
Arianna Pezzano BioProsthesis, MA Material Futures
BioProsthesis is an interdisciplinary project that proposes a way for human-hair waste to be used to produce customised prosthesis for people healing from breast cancer.
Patients experience physical changes during chemotherapy, with hair loss being one of the first moments when their femininity is challenged. In this project, the hair lost during the therapy is collected and used to extract keratin. Utilising keratin as the primary material, I create a prosthesis tailored to the patient’s preference. This process enables the patient to regain a sense of wholeness, with the keratin used in the prosthesis serving as a replacement for the loss of their breast.
Find out more on Arianna’s project HERE
Ása Bríet Brattaberg BA Fashion Design: Womenswear
Coming from two small islands with a rich culture of craftsmanship that have had to work for their independence, handcraft is in my nature as a medium to express. The design construction and the surface of the garment become the focal point, giving the wearer a garment that expresses, excites and evokes emotion. Memories entangled in previously owned garments, while keeping the rich quality of the craftsmanship, are the key. In my collection, I’ve made every piece of textile by hand. I use a zero-waste weaving technique where I weave the garment straight into its shape from old shirts from my grandfather, who recently passed away. The wool in my collection is all hand-spun from wool I got from my grandparents’ sheep in Iceland. Innovative new ways of creating clothing from dead-stock fabrics and beads allow my creations to go into another dimension. Sustainability and leaving no waste behind give me as a designer a challenge and an exciting task to create garments that become otherworldly.
Find out more on Asa’s project HERE
Bocen Zhou BA Jewellery Design
The pieces in this series are crocheted with silver thread – wearable jewellery inspired by hand-crocheted sweaters my grandma made for me. They express the care and pressure I feel in the contradictory intergenerational relationships in Chinese families. The work reviews the intergenerational relationships in contemporary Chinese families, hoping to attract people’s attention to these.
Find out more on Bocen’s project HERE
Duong Thuy Nguyen MA Fine Art
I decided to use crocheting techniques to combine silver and wool threads to show complex intergenerational dynamics. Wool symbolises the love of elders – it’s soft and warm. In contrast to sweaters, silver is cold and prickly, which is actually how I feel about sweaters. I want to use the contrast of these two materials to show the conflicts between different generations. When a warm sweater is damaged, the cool tinsel makes that damage more visible while repairing it. I use silver filament to create a visually fuzzy, sweater-like effect. When the wearer wears it, the seemingly soft but icy metal touches the skin, and that difference and conflict appear.
Find out more on Duong’s project HERE
Eden Brader-Tan BA Fashion Design: Menswear
The project uses the excess fabric connected to the roll to employ the theatrics of the fashion show as a way to legitimise its existence. ‘On Borrowed Fabric’ starts the materials on their journey from creation to obsolescence to recreation, and revels in the idea of someone cutting them into garments having found them in a charity shop.
The motivation for the collection was the possibility of making clothes which could be as easily reprocessed into new garments as if the fabric had never passed through my hands. Trying to preserve the integrity of the fabric as it came off the roll meant that the garments’ construction is limited to only a handful of slits in the fabric, such as a buttonhole or a T-shaped slit for a collar, rather than cutting into and removing fabric as offcuts. And, when the construction alone isn’t enough to convince the eye that it’s more than just a fabric roll, the project utilises trompe l’oeil techniques to fill the gap.
Find out more on Eden’s project HERE
Lily Jenkins MA Character Animation
‘Time Goes’ is an animation about the mundanity and beauty of everyday experience. It’s the culmination of years of observational drawings of the people around me in the neighbourhoods I’ve lived in. In these drawings I have an extensive record of human behaviour, the characteristics that define people individually and the repetitive situations that illustrate our collective experience.
Find out more on Lily’s project HERE
Liz Ebengo MA Material Futures
‘CONTINUED’ examines the sociocultural cost of adapting to climate change and our complicity in cultural erosion. Utilising the capabilities of DNA storage to encrypt a library of sound and film all in one seed means stories that would be forgotten will be remembered.
In my project, I aim to capture the culture of Vanuatu through a special artifact representing the island’s women – their vibrant food, materials and sounds. During my research, I discovered the tale of the last female cultivator of musa balbisiana, a type of wild banana with seeds, on the remote island of Épi. She embodied perseverance and custodianship by nurturing the rare plant while her melodic compositions echoed the spirit of the land. Immortalising her song in the DNA of the very plant she cultivates isn’t only a tribute to the resilient spirit, vibrant heritage and unique contributions of Épi’s women, but also a celebration of the rich cultural tapestry of Vanuatu.
Find out more on Liz’s project HERE
Luke Talbot BA Product and Industrial Design
‘My Powerbank’ is my final-year personal project. It’s a power bank designed for people experiencing homelessness in London that can be charged for free by attaching it to the frame of any stationary Santander bicycle. It works using a dynamo that connects to the chain of the bike, which, if peddled backwards, engages the chain and generates power which is stored in the power bank’s batteries.
‘My Powerbank’ was inspired by Michael Rakowitz’s design piece ‘Parasite’, a series of temporary inflatable shelters for people without housing that utilises New York City’s hot air vents to heat and inflate an igloo-style structure. This idea captivated me – the notion of using something the city gives away for free to benefit those the city is designed against.
Find out more on Luke’s project HERE
George Harvey MA Fine Art Digital
‘Entities’ is an audio-visual exploration into our individual perception of reality. Examining the two fundamentals of life – energy and time – ‘Entities’ investigates our unique understanding of the conscious mind and our respective interpretation of existence.
Find out more on George’s project HERE
Miles Robinson BA Jewellery Design
My collection questions universal hierarchies that centre humans, criticising our own agency in an effort to understand humanity’s place within wider contexts. Using a satirical approach to this questioning, I aim to highlight the pathetic-ness of hubris, specifically focusing on the fragility of human ambition and perception: warped tools, a lightning conductor headpiece that references dunce hats, and badges that label the wearer as tertiary all work to remove our agency.
The aim for this collection is to feel direct and opinionated in its criticisms of hubris. In line with this I’ve aimed to avoid over-considered designs, instead working with familiar geometric forms like the curved hollow hammer which challenges perception and ambition, as a familiar object associated with human agency is rendered useless.
Find out more on Miles’s project HERE
Soe-Myat Noe BA Graphic Communication Design
Cut It, Burn It And Poison It,
Born from my recent encounter with cancer, ‘We Are Not Ones Who Say Much’ is a documentary short film which explores the trauma and emotional effects caused by the disease on an interpersonal relationship through the lived experience of my mum and I. The narrative of the film follows the letters we both wrote for each other, contrasting with video footage filmed on our first trip together post-cancer, and archival photographs from the past.
Making this film has created a vulnerable and honest line of communication in my family which we never had due to the cultural boundaries we were raised in. I hope that viewing my film will encourage the audience to also begin a path of healing with their loved ones.
Find out more on Soe’s project HERE
Victor Healey MA Character Animation
‘Song of the Tadpole’ is a film about the relationship between people and pets, the special bond that exists between us and animals. It’s an animated film with themes of change, growth and love. Combining 2D and 3D animation, with an original score orchestrated specifically for the film, it’s probably the piece of work that I’ve worked hardest on in my entire life.
Find out more on Victor’s project HERE
Yibei Liu BA Ceramic Design
I’m a figurative sculptor and have always been interested in the human condition. Curiosity about human behaviours and emotions is the nutrient for my creative process. The project ‘… …’ shows a series of abstract figurative sculptures that visualise the feelings of being trapped in negative emotional loops. In self-healing, I hope to open more dialogues and increase public awareness of mental illness. I wish to convey the message of ‘you are not alone’ to the audience.
The project name ‘… …’ signifies the six stages I’ve been through when I first encountered depressed emotion. Each dot represents one stage of what I call the ‘recovering cycle’. I’m going through the healing process by revealing the first five stages. Knowing that this cycle will come again strengthens my determination to continue this project.
Find out more on Yibei’s project HERE
Cast Your Vote
The judges have deliberated. The shortlist has been decided. Now it’s over to you! Your vote can help decide who will be crowned the winner of the 2023 YourNOVA ‘People’s Choice’ Award! The winner of the award will receive a cash prize to continue developing their craft and earn global recognition. It only takes a minute, but your vote can advance the creative career of an emerging artist.
Voting is open until Friday 7th July, and all winners will be announced in a ceremony on Wednesday 12th July.
VOTE NOW: mullenlowenova.com/yournova
