Never Dare I Say / On The Fringes – Alice Biolo and Anita Sarkezi

A new contemporary craft exhibition exploring personal narrative through materials and processes.

Alice Biolo’s public engagement project Never Dare I Say, first presented in Austria in 2024, now itinerates to Glasgow with a new edition in which individuals were invited to anonymously share secrets they have never dared to speak aloud. These intimate confessions have been transformed into unique brooches, wearable objects that give physical form to hidden emotions, memories, and experiences.

Each brooch acknowledges the experiences of the anonymous participant, validating emotions often carried in silence. At the same time, the project encourages broader conversations around mental health, vulnerability, shame, and taboo subjects.

The exhibition reflects the emotional landscape of a city through the voices of its people. By translating private revelations into jewellery, Biolo creates works that operate both personally and collectively. Never Dare I Say invites visitors to encounter the unseen emotional lives of others and reflect on the power of speaking what is so often left unsaid.

Anita Sarkezi’s On The Fringes is a body of work including tapestries produced on a TC2 digital jacquard loom as well as digital prints. The project engages with themes of identity, migration, and the political history of the artist’s native region in Slovenia on the Austrian, Croatian, and Hungarian borders.

The work represents a bold and experimental reinterpretation of historical maps, photographs, and botanical illustrations. Using analogue and digital techniques, Sarkezi’s original designs have been converted into strikingly colourful woven structures and prints.

The overall motive of the work is to playfully challenge the arbitrary nature of politically determined borders and imaginatively reclaim a previously colonised space in the Central and Eastern European context.

Alice Biolo (b. 1999, Padova) is an Italian artist based in Glasgow. Working across contemporary jewellery and object-based practice, she creates kinetic and symbolic works that explore grief, insecurity, trauma, and emotional transformation. Biolo graduated from The Glasgow School of Art in 2023 and was Artist in Residence there from 2023 to 2025. Her work has been exhibited internationally across Europe and Asia and has received multiple industry awards. These include the following selected and recent: Artist in Residence, The Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, UK, 2023 – 2025; Artist in Residence 2024 Plattform Schmuckkunst & solo show, Graz, Austria, EU, 2024; One for the Future Award, New York City Jewelry Week (NYCJW), NY, US, 2026 – 2027; Goldsmiths’ Craft & Design Council Awards, Silver & Louisa Guinness Gallery Award for Creative Settings, Merchant Taylors Hall, London, UK, 2026; VACMA (Visual Artist & Craft Maker Awards in partership with Creative Scotland), Glasgow, UK, 2024/25.

Anita Sarkezi (b.1989, Halmstad) was born to working-class Slovenian migrant parents in Sweden and returned to Slovenia during her school years. She has since then lived in several European countries. She moved to Scotland in 2018, and is a graduate of Glasgow School of Art, where she was the recipient of the Newbery Medal. Her multidisciplinary textile design practice explores the interconnected histories of rural material culture, geopolitics, and post-colonialism in Central and Eastern Europe. Recent accolades include: Artist in residence, LOTTOZERO, Prato, Italy, EU, 2025; Artist in Residence, Glagow School of Art, UK, 2023 – 2025; Munich Jewelery Week, Museum Mineralogia Munich, Munich, Germany, EU, (Group Exhibition with Drawing Threads – Design Research Cluster, Glasgow School of Art), 2025; Professional Development Award, The Textile Society, UK, 2025; Individual Open Fund Award, Creative Scotland for ‘On the Fringes’, Glasgow, UK, 2024 – 2025.

* Never Dare I Say was made possible by the Visual Artist & Craft Maker Awards Glasgow 2024/25 (VACMA), in partnership with Creative Scotland.
* On The Fringes is supported by the Creative Scotland Individual Fund.