The Bite Magazine - Issue 11

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Creative A rtists
Review
Dawn Hunt discovers the unique talents of four artistic individuals who have
each made a contribution to the art world and shown their work at 13 The
Gallery in Stoke Newington.
Having shown their work at 13 The
Gallery, a non-profit gallery that
can be best defined as a fair-trade,
community and internationalist, this
organisation has helped Nick Jones,
Loriana Scarnicchia, FAYAZ and Jennie
Willson get noticed in the arts world.
The objective of the gallery is to
promote artistic creation and cultural
heritage, to be an international art and
intergenerational collective activity
hub that would enhance integration
and the well-being of the community.
With a particular interest in creating
opportunities to Latin American and
Caribbean artists as well as others
largely marginalised and disadvantaged
because of their country of origin,
the gallery is able to encourage local
emerging artists to share their work
with the public.
In 2010, the gallery was realised in the
Latin American and Caribbean Seven
Sisters Indoor Market, also called
Pueblito Paisa. 13 The Gallery first
opened with this name in 2012 after a
long and difficult refurbishment project
by Alejandro Gortazar, an award-
winning visual artist and professional
photographer, and the first Cuban-
owned art gallery in Europe. After
several transformations, Newington
Green is now home to the present 13
The Gallery.
Loriana Scarnicchia
Loriana is an Italian artist who
specialises in felting and textile design.
However, she didn’t begin creating
pieces in this soft media,but rather made
her start by working abroad as a make-
up artist for theatre, contemporary
dance and pantomime. After this, she
studied under the tutelage of Marcel
Marceau and Lindsay Kemp whose
teaching assisted in helping her open up
to new avenues of creative expressions,
like felt and textile media.
Scarnicchia then went on to graduate
from City of Guilds at the London
Institute in Design and Craft, in
Constructed Textile (felt making) in
2008. In 2012 her collection, ‘The
Mystical’ constructed from homemade
felt and needling techniques was
chosen by the Royal Academy of Art
to participate in their 2012 Summer
Exhibition. By this point, Scarnicchia had
over 10 years of experience in felting
and has thus created a very unique and
highly difficult to duplicate technique
which makes each piece exclusive and
inimitable.This method of felting entails
extremely long hours, or even days, to
finish an individual work.
Her pieces are quite moving. The soft
media makes the images take on a very
dream-like quality that gives them a
warm, blurry appearance, which makes
their impact all the more emotional.
The colours and bold lines don’t clash
with one another, but rather seamlessly
combine to create very vivid, very
realistic works that could be taken as
filtered photo film or even smeared
paint.
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