Danius Kesminas embodies some of the wilder energies of the Australian cultural scene. The tireless Melbourne artist is very much embedded in the art world – his exhibitions in a cutting edge commercial art gallery quote from modernist art history. Yet Kesminas’ work is far from pretentious: his many projects set about attacking art’s elitism [...]
Posts under ‘Asia’
The latest gossip about Gup Shup in Pakistan
Here’s some news from the Gup Shup project in Pakistan (‘gup shup’ refers to the gossip that happens around cups of tea).
Winter has truly arrived, and the Chitral valley is surrounded with the snow-covered peaks of the Hindukush. In this cold weather, the women gather around the fire, chit-chatting and embroidering. Somehow, Israr and his [...]
Craft out of the cage – Wanda Gillespie’s marvellous discoveries
Wanda Gillespie is an Australian artist who discovered the Indonesian craft of bird cages during a residency with Asialink. While there she worked with the artisans to create a series of works based on the fictional scenario of an island that exists only in her imagination (and the now the art gallery).
This island of [...]
Finding a good home for Lao silk
Samorn Sanixay is an Australian woman born in Laos who has established a company Eastern Weft that seeks a market for Laos silk in countries like Australia. Her project requires a good fit between two radically different worlds. What seems critical to Samorn is an appreciation of serious craft – something more likely to [...]
Bali carves up the Glick International Foundation
You come up with a brilliant idea. You find someone with the skills to realise that idea perfectly. You work out a fair price. While the person is completing the job, others discover your idea and start copying it. Should you try to stop them, or risk your singular idea now just being one of [...]
Craft jumps out of the box in South Korea
The 2009 Cheongju International Craft Biennale under its current director Dr. Ihnbum Lee seeks to position craft broadly within the arts as a unifying element. Ihnbum Lee claims that various art forms have been ‘boxed in’ to separate disciplines, making it difficult to experience their common nature. For Lee, craft offers an alternative to [...]
Artlink launch: Connie Zheng’s five principles for working in China
The launch for Artlink gathered together the local Melbourne contributors to the After the Missionaries issue. To mark the occasion, Dr Connie Zheng from RMIT spoke about the nature of doing business with China. Her thoughts provided much food for thought about the new kinds of dialogue opening with countries like China. Here’s an [...]
Janet DeBoos – hand-designed in Australia, factory-crafted in China
In Australia, ceramics is under siege. Since the boom of the 1970s, the number of courses available have rapidly declined. For today’s iphone generation, the dedication required by clay-making poses a significant lifestyle challenge – it threatens to disconnect you from the ‘clouds’ of text and image that give meaning to the day. Of [...]
Cheryl Adam – ‘bat people’ fight back with plastic
Cheryl Adam is a recycle artist from Melbourne associated with the Philippine organisation Peace Women Partners (PWP). In her previous work, Cheryl collaborated with the Moro women from the Philippines’ Muslim population. For The World of Small Things, she is working in collaboration with a group of extremely poor homeless population from Manila, [...]
Polly&me – masterpieces in idle chatter from Pakistan
‘GupShup’ means chit chat in Urdu and Hindi. It was the title of an exhibition by Polly&me, a group working on an embroidery project involving women in Chitral, in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. The results of their workshops were displayed in Islamabad and Karachi, where half of the works were sold. The creative [...]
