Mixed Belongings: Eight Contemporary African Makers, an exhibition exploring how eight makers, four based in the UK and four in Africa, forge their own creative paths through their African heritage, has opened at Hawick Museum.

Over the last decade, African craft has gone through a period of significant change.  As makers from around the world have increasingly turned to Africa for inspiration, African makers have equally found inspiration from the West.  While drawing on African imagery and tradition – from the hypnotic Arabic calligraphy of north Africa to the violence of the pyrographic technique used in the south – the exhibition explores this creative dialogue through a display of ceramics, metal, sculpture, textiles, basketry and furniture.

Mixed Belongings considers how African sensibilities and histories affect each individual exhibiting maker and questions notions of identity and belonging.  Visitors to the exhibition will take a journey through politics and personal history, experiencing work that ranges from figurative sculptures and adorned vessels to beaten metal objects and baskets interwoven with stories.

The eight makers participating in the exhibition are Lawson Oyekan, Ndidi Ekubia, Taslim Martin, Sandile Zulu, Gabatsholwe Ntwe, Omega Ludenyi, Shirley Ann Dixon and Khaled Ben Slimane.

Mixed Belongings is a Crafts Council touring exhibition and is on at the Hawick Museum, Wilton Lodge Park, Hawick TD9 7JL tel: 01450 373457 from 3 April to 28 May 2006.  Opening hours Monday to Friday 10am to 12 and 1pm to 5pm and weekends 2pm to 5pm.  Admission free.

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