artist profile
Ed Cruikshank
born
1965
lives and works
Queenstown, New Zealand
education
Rycotewood College, Oxford, UK, 1986–88
BA, Ravensbourne College of Art and Design, London, UK, 1991
about the artist
A bespoke furniture designer, Ed Cruikshank resolves to create pieces that endure over time. Upon venturing into the realm of art-making, he staunchly preserves a commitment to the highest caliber of creativity and craftsmanship as he imbues his utilitarian pieces with reverberating themes of humanism. He seamlessly incorporates Braille into his designs, culminating in a structurally integral and subtly powerful corpus of messages. A revolving table with a steel center—whose surface is inscribed with a quote by Martin Luther King, Jr., in Braille, “I have decided to stick with love, hate is too great a burden to bear”—and a set of bookshelves proportioned exactly to the North and South towers of the World Trade Center in New York, respectively inscribed in Braille with the same quote and in reverse “I have decided to stick with hate, love is too great a burden to bear,” were shown in the international touring exhibition, Roundabout, which traveled from the City Gallery Wellington in New Zealand to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel. Trained in fine cabinetmaking and industrial product design, and specializing in furniture, Cruikshank was previously consultant and then Head of Design for LINLEY in London, UK, before leaving to found CRUIKSHANK Ltd. in 2002. The company boasts an impressive team of skilled craftsmen and designers, and has undertaken projects and commissions through New Zealand as well as in Singapore, Ireland, Hong Kong, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.