This summer 45 Southside will be exhibiting a selection of work from Lucy Richards, a recent graduate of 3D Design Crafts with a degree from Arts University Plymouth. Lucy received multiple awards at her graduate showcase including 45 Southside Galleries’ Graduate Showcase Award. There was a high standard of 3D graduate work to select from but Lucy’s stood out conceptually and aesthetically.

Lucy’s degree project is called “Navigate: A Series of Markers”, is a series of mixed media sculptures inspired by the variety of coastal and oceanic navigation markers that Lucy has encountered around Plymouth Sound and Mount Batten. These symbolic brightly coloured buoys assist with navigation and data collection and are specific to coastlines. For example, cardinal markers indicate safe water and lateral markers indicate direction of travel. Lucy has responded to the architectural forms, compositions, and bright colours of these markers, which she has abstracted to produce geometric frameworks that are filled with deformed blown glass and concrete structures. At times, during her third-year studies, Lucy felt as if she was ‘lost at sea’, so these waymarkers became poignant symbols. After an amazingly response to her graduate show, Lucy is no longer ‘lost at sea’ and has plans to pursue glass as a medium. Lucy has an exciting future ahead of her.