Category Archives: Exhibition

Crafts and trade meet in a gallery

Here’s an antidote to the skills shortage (see Symmetry for an allied exploration of the dialogue between craft and work)

Trades: Creative engagements between artists and tradespeople

  • Opening 6pm Friday 24 October 2008
  • JamFactory Contemporary Craft and Design
  • Opening Speaker: Janet Giles, Secretary SA Unions
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Craftsouth’s latest project, Trades, links craft, design and visual arts practitioners with various trades.

Eight artists have undertaken working partnerships with eight tradespeople through which new works have been developed.

Initiated in response to an artist’s desire to experience a genuine exchange of skills with a tradesperson, rather than to subcontract the production of an object, Trades features partnerships as diverse as: David Archer (sculptor) with Rod Archer (plumber); Gabriella Bisetto (glass artist) with Monty Clements (scientific lamp worker); Annabelle Collett (textile artist) with Jethro Adams (electrician); Deb Jones (glass artist) with Hugh Gooden (panel beater); Irianna Kanellopoulou (ceramicist) with Kirsten Tibballs (pastry chef); Maria Parmenter (ceramicist) with Andrew Willsmore (arborist); Adrian Potter (furniture designer-maker) with Amy Duncan (tattooist); Annalise Rees (installation artist) with Jonathan Bowles (carpenter).

The symbolic importance of craft cannot be underestimated, as it is at the core of all working practices.  And it is this relationship between craft and other work practices that Trades aims to explore by offering artists the opportunity to experience specific skills and industry knowledge that may not normally be available to them in their day to day work practices.

The flexibility of this project model has resulted in a variety of partnerships and working arrangements. Stepping outside their comfort zones, both the artists and the tradespeople have had to be broadminded about their open-ended engagements, and have realised that it doesn’t always help to pre-empt the exact nature of the final work. However, whether the works featured in this exhibition were produced through collaboration or not, they reveal a genuine engagement reinforced by mutual interest and respect.

By presenting the Trades partnership outcomes to South Australian audiences in partnership with JamFactory, Craftsouth hopes to raise public awareness of the significant role that craft plays in all working cultures.

This project has been developed and produced by Craftsouth with assistance by Arts SA, Health Promotion Through the Arts, and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy (VACS), an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.

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Go bush at the national centre

I’m spending a couple of weeks in Canberra with the ceramics department at the Canberra School of Art. The region has quite its fair share of craft capital.

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Beth Hatton ‘transient as a tree’ 2008, cedar tripod, acacia tree root
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Beth Hatton Introducing species scotch thistle, yorkshire fog, redanther wallaby grass, allocasuarina seeks, linen thread

The redoubtable CraftACT maintains its standard of beautiful exhibitions resonant with narrative. Baseline: Remnant Grassland of Weereewa/Lake George includes new works by fibre artist Beth Hatton and painter Christine James. Beth Hatton continues her style of work creating objects out of stitched grass. This resonates strongly with the work of West Australian artists such as Nalda Searles, Joyce Winsley and Kate Campbell-Pope. Beth’s new work exaggerates the loose ends of her objects and dramatises the transformation from grass to form. It’s complemented by the landscapes of James and a most engaging animation by Caroline Huf. It was orchestrated by a forum out at Lake George where a group of around 70 huddled in a tent to hear stories from farmers taking responsibility for their land.

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Gail Nichols with opening speaker Janet Deboos at Studio Altenburg gallery in Braidwood

It seems Canberrans have a soft spot for Braidwood, which is the favourite stopover on the way to the coast at Bateman’s Bay. As a heritage town, it has a very strong craft feel. There are three quilting shops and another shop devoted to Alpacca crafts. Their major cultural event of the year is the ‘airing of the quilts’, when these local masterpieces are hung out along the main street.

Gail Nichols is an established ceramicist whose work does well in Melbourne and Sydney. The soda vapour firings leave an orange tinge the resonates with the rocky soils in the area. The exhibition was very popular with locals. The works were subject of great attention and sales were good.

Braidwood sits in the electorate of Eden-Monero, the bellwether seat that determines the balance of power in its neighbouring town Canberra. There’s something charming about national government residing in a place with such a sophisticated bush culture.

Cohn’s counter-reformation

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Cohn_2008_Blood For Oil 2

Susan Cohn Blood for Oil 2, tubing and fake blood, 2008 (Image courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery)

Second Thoughts is quite a surprising show from Susan Cohn. Previous shows like Black Intentions have has quite specific sociological agendas in the way they situate jewellery within a social function or ritual, like mourning. One of the remarkable elements of Cohn’s jewellery is the way she is able to ‘marry’ the social purpose with a rigorous modernist approach to making. Her modernist does not lead to sterile abstractions. Her jewellery engenders confidence not only that as something that can be trusted with a personal story, but also can work well as an piece of ornament.

In Second Thoughts, Cohn selects the sash as a form for investigation. It’s a particular rich choice, with associations of official title as well as a form that envelopes the body. There are some hallmark Cohn elements such as re-purposing technical materials, such as body bags and pipettes. In relation to other Australian jewellers, Cohn’s use of ‘sourced’ materials is relatively unique. These are not found materials that she gleans from her immediate environment, but rather manufactured products that require her to engage as a maker with fellow makers in the factories of outer Melbourne.

But surprisingly for Cohn are recycled and found materials. The signature piece is made from old Black Intentions catalogues. She has also collected the metal tops of champagne and wine bottles that now now decorate sash forms. These materials introduce a sentimentality which seems quite new in Cohn’s work. Taking a few steps back, on the eve of the first Earth Hour, they perhaps echo the ‘second thoughts’ being now experienced in the first world about the benefits of economic growth.

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Susan Cohn Black Intentions Anna Schwartz Gallery 2008 (Image courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery)

This re-consideration is emphasised by the ironic display furniture.  Works are shown on black velvet resting loosely over card tables. Cohn has chosen the stereotyped demotic frame of outdoor craft market for the interior of Melbourne’s most ultra-modernist contemporary art space. You feel that Cohn seeks out the clash of sensibilities.

But even more surprisingly at the end of Cohn’s exhibition, are two pieces using plastic tubing normally associated with medical procedures. In both works, she has injected fake blood (sourced from a local magic shop). The result is quite elegant, with the blood and air forming natural beads in the plastic. But the theatrical effect of these pieces at the end of Cohn’s series is at odds with the more scientific feel of previous shows.

I couldn’t help feeling that Cohn’s turn here was like a counter-reformation, where the rituals of the Catholic mass, such as transubstantiation, began to make their way back into Christian workshop after the austerity of German Protestantism. One can’t help associating the series of black tableaus along the gallery with the stations of the cross. Its quite a surprising move, but adds weight to the journey that precedes it. It shows Cohn as an artist who continues to be alive to her craft.


If you have the chance it is worth also visiting the New08 show at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. You will see a selection of contemporary visual art that has retreated from the world into a kind of Play School innocence. Some institutions seem to position visual art as a radical way of re-thinking the world, yet end up with what amounts to a crèche for the white fortress. With Susan Cohn’s show, you certainly are reminded of how it might be otherwise.