The view from inside the conference in Bergen

And the view looking out from the conference

Tanya Harrod followed with a beautiful lecture on the theme of the rag-picker, covering many examples of art projects that extracted works of beauty from the slums. She spoke highly of the work by Brazilian artist Vik Munos, featured in the film Wasteland, who donated money from the sale of his works to the favela dwellers who made it possible. While critical of those who mindlessly use the poor of the world to make high-end design, Harrod praised those who embrace the act of making with all its responsibilities. Caroline Slottee and Paul Scott provided examples of work with readymade ceramics and Ezra Shales considered the role of museum as a contested site for these works.

On the second day, Monica Gaspar introduced the concept of the infra-ordinary as a space opened up by use of the readymade. She provided a feast of contemporary work associated with her recent exhibition ‘Re-defining the Applied’, which reflected a shift away from the object itself to the way in which we inhabit. A highlight was the film by Swede Olas Stephenson where a gang breaks into a house to create musical symphonies using objects from each room. Andrew Livingston followed with a bold attempt to place use of the readymade in the context of sustainability. It made perfect sense, but the ethical logic seems at odds with the aesthetic context of the conference. Barnaby Barford’s artist talk presented narrative as an alternative context of the readymade. His film for the exhibition brilliantly demonstrated the power of pathos in the leftover figurine.

The day ended with Jorunn Veiteberg herself who expounded the thesis behind the conference. She loyally used local artists to illustrate her thesis that the ceramic readymade is following Duchamp’s liberating gesture with ‘Fountain’ to liberate the art object from the ‘fetish’ of the handmade. Veiteberg argued that re-purposing existing ceramics opens up new possibilities of creative intervention.

The last day began with Michael Petry, author of The Art of Not Making. His ebullient talk covered many instances of artists using skills of craftspersons, praising those who acknowledged their contributions. As one of those grateful artists themselves, Petry spoke very much from the commissioner’s perspective, focusing more on the grand ambitions of the artists than any creative input from technicians. The Polish ceramist Marek Cecula followed with a wonderful account of his career in ceramics, parallel to his remarkable personal journey as a survivor of the holocaust who returned to make work about the value of human labour. Linda Sormin followed in the afternoon with a lively short account of her practice in making ceramic interventions in museum spaces around the world.

As the second last presentation, I attempted to introduce the relational dimension of the readymade. This regarded the commissioned object, rather than the found object. I focused particularly on the work of artists who have their work made in Asia. Rather than a post-industrial aesthetic, I considered a ‘para-industrial’ condition where work responds to the scene of making ‘elsewhere’.

Rather than leave space for questions at the end of each paper, the conference was programmed with generous breaks where participants could discuss issues among themselves. While this was quite convivial, it was difficult to tell what the conference had achieved at the end. Making or Unmaking? provided a symbolic departure from the studio model of the ceramicist, whose work reflects the personal experience of clay. But it left hanging the question of where this is going. Is it opening ceramics up as an installation-based art form? Is it part of the elegiac moment in Europe as it sees its manufacturing capacities drift off to Asia? Does it reflect a sustainability ethic that eschews making anything new, in favour of re-purposing the old? These questions needed airing, either in response to papers or in panel discussions.

Most pressing is the gradual loss of a global dialogue around ceramics. Last month’s Gyeonggi Ceramix Biennale in Korea did not have one entry from Britain, and there was little opportunity for dialogue between representatives of east and west. As globalisation continues to expand, it seems a mistake to turn inward. Modern ceramics has such a rich history of borrowing between cultures.

Norway has set the pace. We now need to pass the baton.

PS. If you are interested in purchasing a copy of the excellent catalogue, then send an email to KHiB publications at resepsjonen@khib.no. Price: NOK 250,- (EUR 34) + handling expenses. More information here.

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The Valparaiso ‘clinic’ attracted around 100 participants, thanks to the good work of Professor Patty Gunther, who has been leading innovative programs in social design at the Universidad de Valparaiso. With such a number, I was very grateful for the assistance of local jewellers Omar Luengo and Nicholás Hernández.

Omar Lunego talking to participants

Our task was to identify problems that required something more than a simple practical solution to be resolved, and then to design objects that might fill that void. Patty had provided boxes of the fragments left after the earthquake had destroyed so many precious things. How to turn this destruction into beautiful jewellery was a subtext of this workshop.

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The workshop addressed this with great gusto and overnight amazingly well-formulated objects emerged. As usual with Valparaiso, the tenor was idealistic: broad problems were identified such as loneliness and environmental change. The results tended to take the form of objects that could be broken up, with the parts distributed to people who would then have a point of contact with each other. One of the pieces responding to the threat of tsunami used the Mapuche myth of the sea serpent tren tren to great effect.

Santiago Charm School

The Santiago ‘escuela de encanto’ was more specialised in jewellery. The workshop was organised by local jewellers Francisco Ceppi and Valentina Rosenthal and took place at the Museo Bellas Artes, the august national art gallery. Participants included 34 of the city’s top jewellers. Their problems were more concrete than those at Valparaiso, including the job interview, school examination, chemotherapy and overseas student exchange. Earthquake related problems included the emergency bag kept by the door and protection for the house. Over two intense days, groups developed designs for objects to help us cope with these challenges. The charm for examination was based on the tradition of the torpedo, where students insert a scroll of formulae into their pens to help get the right answers – though in this case the paper contained messages of encouragement. The charm for chemotherapy used the very plastic tubing that makes this procedure so uncomfortable, transforming this into a colourful bracelet form. What worked particularly well were the performances, where groups enacted the power of their objects.

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The seed has been sown. We’ll see what results from this when the Southern Charms exhibition arises next year, hopefully now touring back to Chile. The present challenge is to extend the Latin American component to include Bolivia, with its global voice on climate change. But more immediately we have the workshops looming in Sydney and Melbourne. The focus on earthquake in Chile could have an interesting echo with the issue of bushfires in Victoria. Both challenges demand more than just technological responses, they require contexts in which people can come together, rather than fend for themselves.

• For updates on the Southern Charms project, tune into #charm101 on twitter.
• Visit the Santiago blog here.
• Bookings for the Melbourne Charm School here.

The scene directly outside the Museo Bellas Artes where something was always happening.

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Reviewed for World Sculpture News by Christine Nicholls

Tegan Empson, 2007, Brown Bunny (h 53.4 cm, x d:16.5 cm x w 15 cm) and Grey Bunny (h:50 cm, d x 14.5 cm x w 19 cm).

Tegan Empson 'Grey Bunny' 2007 (50 cm high)

Glass artist Tegan Empson’s solo exhibition, Idol Moments, on show in Adelaide’s prestigious JamFactory Contemporary Craft and Design’s Gallery 2 in late 2009, deservedly garnered a good deal of public attention. The works that Empson included in Idol Moments are hand blown, sculpted and laminated ‘creatures’. Wheel-cut and sand-etched, with a surface-coated finish, these works evince a high level of technical skill and more than a smidgeon of sheer playfulness on the part of their youthful maker.

The glass works comprising Idol Moments included finely crafted glass rabbits, robots, and cats, all of which show influences of popular culture and contemporary media. To a very limited extent these charismatic, whimsical, quasi-anthropomorphic creations exemplify the ‘kawaii factor’ insofar as, on the surface at least, they appear to be childlike, vulnerable, harmlessly droll and emotionally needy. However Tegan Empsons’s glass ‘idols’ are more than simply ‘funny bunnies’ or ‘little cuties’. To some degree these works are infused with what at one level might be described as a ‘tiny-tots aesthetic’, but the sophisticated workmanship cleverly subverts such an understanding. The works that comprise Idol Moments are definitely not cloyingly cute in the ‘Hello Kitty’ mould, but neither are they mean and crafty. Rather, they are imbued with true innocence, purity and ingenuousness – categorically more Beatrix Potter than Bugs Bunny. Equally, the exhibition’s title, in part pun, partly bathetic juxtaposition, subtly undercuts the possibility of any uni-dimensional interpretation. There are levels of understanding Empson’s body of work, extending well beyond the superficial.

HiWired

Tegan Empson 'HiWired' 2008 (31cm high), hand sculpted solid glass robot with hot-joined and UV laminated components and duro cane inclusions

Importantly, the leavening influences of Empson’s irony and light-hearted, quirky humour peppered with just a dash of old-fashioned camp, combine to prod her audience into thinking about the readiness of many our contemporaries to create ‘idols’ out of inappropriate, mundane, unworthy, or commonplace figures or objects, indeed out of practically anything at all. Tegan Empson’s unassuming ‘critters’ challenge the very notion of idolatry by their gestural simplicity and their humility of bearing.

So, in titling this group of works Idol Moments, Empson gently mocks the emptiness and ridiculousness of our society’s blind worship and adoration of objects, people or animals that are, in many instances, unremarkable or ordinary. The title is also an invitation to her audience to step back, for just a little while, and reflect upon this bizarre contemporary social phenomenon.

While in Idol Moments the absurdity of contemporary society’s appetite for celebrity and commodity fetishism may be the focus of Tegan Empson’s wry sense of humour, in the end it is the artist who has the last laugh. Empson’s signature hand blown works are beautifully made and finished and for these reasons they draw well-justified admiration. In creating such elegant, extremely covetable glass artworks, which are currently in high demand, Empson is unintentionally perpetuating the very phenomenon that she critiques.

In a final ironic twist, Sir Elton John recently purchased two of Tegan Empson’s glass bunnies (‘Brown Bunny’ and ‘Grey Bunny’) from a Sydney gallery. A propos of Idol Moments, there seems to be a certain poetic justice in that.

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The forum ‘Fair Trade for Creative Labour’ at RMIT’s Design Research Institute explored the regulation of cultural production through accreditation formats like Fair Trade. Speakers included Associate Professor Tim Scrase (Wollongong University), who has published widely in the plight of artisans particularly in India, Linda Chalmers (Oxfam Australia) who product manager for the largest Fair Trade business in Australia dealing with world craft, and Associate Professor Donald Feaver (RMIT University), who specialises in the new field of translational law. This was an unique opportunity to think both critically and constructively about how creative producers in the Global South work with designers and artists from the richer countries.

Tim Scrase began with a strong critical perspective on schemes like Fair Trade. He invoked the concept of ‘commodity fetishism’ to describe a process whereby the meaning of a product is taken out of the hands of the producer. He expressed scepticism of Fair Trade as a system that creates ‘rigmarole’ and doesn’t address the inherent inequity of a market system.

Linda Chalmers was able to respond by describing the Oxfam model. She admitted that the purpose of the trading arm is to make money. But she distinguished this from corporate model where profit flows to shareholders. Instead, it is the producers who benefit. For Chalmers, overarching concern is the broader Oxfam goal of poverty alleviation. She informed us that they currently have 23 shops in Australia which last year sold works to the value of $11m. They represent 100 producer networks from 30 countries. When Oxfam engages with design, it is usually on a philanthropic basis and the designer does not receive any benefit. Part of the partnership is for the designer to pass on their skills so they are no longer needed. Linda advocated for Fair Trade as an evolving system that offered the best deal in working with producers.

Donald Feaver presented a typology of Codes of Practice. He argued that purely internal Codes rarely work. But as globalisation is extending supply chains, it has become increasingly important to find ways of ensuring common standards from beginning to end. Because these extend beyond national boundaries, the development of these codes has been largely beyond the scope of individual nation states, and has instead become largely a private concern. Feaver spoke particularly of the development of a code for CIBJO, the world jewellery body. This provoked much animated discussion about whether a private organisation could be the best vehicle for an ethical code.

The ensuing discussion highlighted a divide between the Fair Trade model and the ‘high end’ of the market. The textile artist Samorn Sanixay spoke about being approached by an exclusive design store to stock her product made in Laos. On being a given a price for her scarves, they responded that they were ‘too cheap to sell’ – their customers would only buy these if they were triple the price. She queried how Fair Trade could reach this end of the market.

The discussion identified a current limit to the Fair Trade model in how it deals with creative products, such as ‘designer goods’ or art works. Fair Trade has been identified particularly with agriculture where the primary focus is worker’s wages and conditions. In creative products, there are less easily measured values such as authenticity and intellectual property. Standards for these differ between and within cultures.

At the moment, there are important moves within Fair Trade to accommodate these issues. For instance, the draft Sustainable Fair Trade Management System has a provision:

6.5.4 Where the Organisation produces direct copies of existing designs that have not been produced by its own designers, it obtains and retains documentary evidence that the copying of a design is agreed upon by the original designer or producer group.

Fair Trade is providing an important base on which supply chains can be made equitable. But as the forum’s discussion identified, there can be problems with a system of accreditation which enables retailers to tick boxes without critically appraising what’s happening on the ground. This is not a problem with Fair Trade per se, but with the limits of an international and necessary bureaucratic structure.

Designers like Samorn Sanixay seem to be wanting something in addition. The issue of cultural sensitivity was raised as critical in developing partnerships with traditional producers. It’s difficult to imagine any system of accreditation being able to cover issues such as appropriateness of designs used in different contexts. This requires trust and openness between the guest designer and host community. A well-built relationship has the potential to involve producers more creatively in the process of product development.

There seems a need for an extension of the Fair Trade system which enables critical reflection on the issues involved in collaboration. This would both set out important principles in how partnerships are developed and provide a conversation where individual experiences could add to a collective wisdom. In addition to the minimal standards for accreditation, this could pose aspirational goals for ideal practice.

Fair Trade is certainly one of the most significant developments this century in the promotion of world craft. It’s enabled hundreds of craft cooperatives to find a market for their work and assured consumers about the benefits of their purchase to producers. It’s currently in a state of rapid evolution as it tries to keep step with ever expanding expectations of a Fair Trade model. Could we imagine a Fair Trade art? That’s a question still to be answered, but it is likely to involve more than fulfilling accreditation criteria. What might that be?

This conversation will continue next month at the UNESCO workshop on craft-design collaborations in Santiago. Craft Unbound will continue to feature examples of artists, craftspersons and designers working across the cultural divide. As they straddle rich and poor worlds, heritage and sustainability values, their stories deepen our understanding of how the world fits together. In the future, we can begin to identify what these principles are.

One possible place to start would be with Nelson Mandela’s advice, ‘the first thing is to be honest with yourself’.

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The discussion was premised on the operation of the Kyoto Protocol as a means to address climate change through a global consensus, requiring agreement between the two halves of the world. Many of the artists discussed in After the Missionaries explored new paths that connect the global North and South.

The process of writers speaking to their articles proved quite fruitful. The four local writers were able to provide new layers to the articles they originally published in Artlink. In a way, it provided an immediate demonstration of value-adding.

Neil Fettling reflected on the dilemma of the Archibald Prize for David Griggs – how, if he had won, he would have to deal with the issue of co-authorship with the Philippine billboard artist Rene Oserin. Helen Vivian explored in more detail the way Jonathan Kimberley’s canvases engaged with Jim Everitt’s words. Kelly Fliedner spoke more broadly about how artists react defensively to writing which places their work in an ethical context. And Emily Potter reflected on the dilemma of symbolic acts at a time when immediate direct action seems called for.

A common theme was the technique of palimpsest. The layering of images provided a means of combining two very different points of view without assuming they could be merged into a single position.

The intense discussion that followed focused on the subject of global art involving traditional artisans. A position began to evolve that collaborations were possible as long as their was open negotiation between both commissioning artist and artisan. But the example of ‘sex tourism’, when it could be claimed that there is free negotiation between the Western client and a young local prostitute, prompted a need to consider the parameters of negotiation more closely. There was also a question about why this commissioning must always come from the rich countries. There were relatively few examples when artists or artisans from poor countries had initiated collaboration.

There was broad consensus that art had an important role to play in bridging the global divide and reflecting critically on the ways we inhabit the world. There seemed a feeling that there was still important work to do in responding critically to the new forms of global art that are beginning to emerge.

But alongside all that, there was a recognition that there would always be something about art that could not fit neatly into ethical or utilitarian frames. This very freedom of art helps propose new possibilities and alternative ways of seeing. How do we sustain the creative freedom of art while seeking ways of making a better world?

As we dispersed into the night, this seemed a particularly verdant question with which to greet the coming spring.

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