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Time to take a front seat

Mar 12th, 2009
by Kevin Murray.
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image

Congratulations to Simone LeAmon for winning the 2009 Cicely & Colin Rigg Contemporary Design Award which opened at the National Gallery of Victoria last night. Her Lepidoptera chair continues the creative use of recycled materials that she had forged in her classic Bowling Arm bracelets.

Other entrants included Adam Cornish, Lambie Chan, Lucas Chirnside, Matthew Harding, Cathy Jankowsky, Joseph Keenan, Jacqueline Ying Jun Lin, Chris Connell, Stuart McFarlane, Ross McLeod, Drew Martin & Dale Rock (Rock Martin), Oliver Field, and Helen Kontouris.

Congratulations to all, but there are concerns.

This year’s award continue the NGV’s presentation of the Rigg award as an exhibition of ‘contemporary design’. Previous media have included ceramics, jewellery, hollowware and textiles. Presenting these in purely ‘design’ terms has the effect of focussing attention on the cleverness and fashion. It tends to marginalise more cultural issues expressed through the language of materials. In a country like Australia, wood has great power as a symbol of identity. 

Let’s hope that the next iteration of the Cicely & Colin Rigg award brings craft back into the equation. Design hardly lacks for recognition in our world. And the global financial crisis demands that we reconsider our own skills and culture. Maybe the 2011 Cicely & Colin Rigg Craft & Design Award will be for glass. I’ll drink to that.

Rich and poor, Australian and Aotearoa

Sep 20th, 2008
by admin.
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If you’re around the north island…

Rich Craft, Poor Craft – Thursday 2 October

Writers Kevin Murray and Damian Skinner will present two illustrated talks about Murray’s concept of ‘rich and poor craft’ in contemporary jewellery from Australia and New Zealand.

Baroque ‘n’ Roll: the forest versus the street in contemporary Australian jewellery. In this talk Kevin Murray will discuss concepts of rich and poor craft drawn from the alternative classical and modernist strategies that have characterised much of recent southern arts.

Native/Natural, Settler/Silver: Considering Murray’s Theory of Rich and Poor Craft in Contemporary Jewellery from Aotearoa. In this talk Damian Skinner argues that Murray’s dialectic of rich craft and poor craft in Australian jewellery can be mapped very differently within contemporary New Zealand jewellery.

Dr Kevin Murray is a writer who lives in Melbourne, Australia. His book, Craft Unbound: Make the Common Precious, was published by Craftsman House in 2005. Dr Damian Skinner is a writer who lives in Gisborne. His book, Between Tides: Jewellery by Alan Preston, is being published by Random House in October 2008.

Thursday 2 October, 6.15pm, Room WE 230 AUT campus, Auckland, New Zealand

The German forest comes to Namibia

Jul 25th, 2008
by admin.
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A6 postcard

A6 postcard


Hentie van der Merwe Messenger 2007 Polyurethane Mask 68 x 46 x 23cm Stand 150cm   

A recent exhibition in South Africa provides an interesting comparison to Melbourne’s ‘jewellery of the forest’. Hentie van der Merwe has been studying the German archive of folktales collected from the Nama people in Namibia. She recognised this tales from her own childhood, though they were excluded from Afrikaner culture because of their violence and complexity.

It’s interesting in today’s South Africa than an Afrikaner artist can draw on this material. It would be inconceivable for an Australian artist to be making reference to Aboriginal mythologies in this way. Is this because of the greater respect for indigenous cultures in Australia, or our more Eurocentrist outlook?

Deeper into the forest

Feb 8th, 2008
by admin.
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Since the Forest or the bush? paper for the JMGA conference, I’ve come across some more expressions of the enchanted woods in the local craft & design scene.

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DSCF3231

 Casey Payne and Sassie Napolitano in their Northcote store In the Woods which contains a herd of bears, deer, foxes and other creatures of today’s handmade culture.
siri hayes woods

siri hayes woods

Where in the Woods?, an exhibition with
Richard Grigg, Siri Hayes (photo left), Amanda Marburg and Mark Rodda at VCA Galleries until 15 March
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DSCN1229 a

Sue Lorraine, workshop coordinator of the metal studio, JamFactory Craft & Design Centre Adelaide, with some gamey looking mounted wall pieces from 2005