Tag Archives: Chile

Wellington I wonder

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Damian Skinner and I continued our jewellery journey down to Wellington principally to see the objects that featured in the Bone, Stone and Shell exhibition that toured Australia in 1988. While Te Papa had collected this exhibition as a historic moment in New Zealand culture, we found it scattered across the museum in different displays, telling different stories. The same could be said of their jewellery collection as a whole, which is spread across different artistic, historic and cultural areas, something which seemed to concern Damian.

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Collection manager Anne Brooks with photography curator Athol McCredie and Damian Skinner inspecting one of Tania Patterson’s ingenious flower pendants.

Wellington seemed like Melbourne to Auckland’s Sydney – darker, more cerebral and fashion conscious, though if only Melbourne had Wellington’s rain! While there weren’t jewellery exhibitions in galleries like Auckland, Avid and Quoil profiled the medium strongly.

In step with the city’s more speculative culture, Peter Decker’s students had a playful little exhibition at Wellington museum which used jewellery to forge alternative histories.

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From a distance, I’m stuck by what a powerful role jewellery has played in New Zealand cultural life. Bone, Stone and Shell has probably more detractors now than champions.  Yet it continues to resonate as testimony of how jewellers can forge a place for themselves which both asserts a sense of belonging and makes space for individual imagination.

This story certainly raises expectations of the role that craft might play. So let’s see what’s emerging in a country where the idea of craft as an art form is still relatively young. Bookending the other end of the Pacific is another thin vertical country, with distinctive indigenous craft traditions, neighbour to more powerful nations. What’s emerging in Chile…

Craft across the Pacific

In cooperation with Raiz Diseño, ONA and MAVI (Museum of Visual Art), we will be presenting a workshop in Santiago Chile on 16-18 October to explore ways of exhibiting craft in art galleries. This is a wonderful opportunity to extend the dialogue between contemporary craft in Australia and Latin America and will coincide with the publication of the first craft magazine Mano de Obra.

Images on the flyer are from Marian Hosking, Nicole Lister, Beth Hatton and the group exhibition Heresy (Craft Victoria). The brooch below is by Roseanne Bartley (a larger version can be downloaded here).

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Dark forces in the sunshine state

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While the rest of Brisbane was roaring for its state rugby team tonight, a ‘quiet revolution’ was taking place at the Queensland University of Technology Art Museum. Catriona Brown (left) had curated an exhibition Craft Revolution, which featured work from strongly located contemporary craftspersons and proud craft guilds. At a panel with Kylie Johnson (centre) and Robyn Daw (right), we talked about craft’s place in the world today.

There was much talk about the importance of craft as a form of local production. Kylie talked about resisting the lure of making her work off-shore. While local in ethic, there was great interest in the shared struggles with craft scenes in other countries, such as in Chile and South Africa.

Revolution? Well, it doesn’t have the extreme radicalism that you might associate with the term. There are no craft guerilla organisations blowing up art galleries or IKEA outlets. But there’s certainly a move to home-grown forms of resistance. Let them bake cakes!

Craft has much to live up to. Luckily there are some passionate advocates on the front line.

Tim Winton: a tradesman of the ordinary

Carmen Lawrence reviews Tim Winton’s new novel Breath for the Australian Literary Review. There are two points that seem worth noting. First, she describes Winton as a ‘tradesman’:

Winton has often said that he regards himself as a tradesman rather than an artist; in Breath he confirms his status as a consummate wordsmith who can take our breath away with the pungency of his portraits of the landscape.

The craft analogy in writing seems to bolster our confidence in reading Winton. We can feel sure that the illusions he creates on the page are well made and will not show cracks that threaten our suspension of disbelief.

The second point is about his celebration of the ‘ordinary’:

Winton has often said that he thinks the ordinary things in life are worthy of celebration and that he tries in his writing to have the commonplace "looked at anew". Whether it is the Lambs and the Pickles in Cloudstreet or the old recluse in An Open Swimmer, he writes sympathetically about "people who aren’t articulate, aren’t mobile and are often alienated and powerless". He strives to render the ordinary as transcendent; he once said that "ordinary life overflows with divine grace".

Its interesting to consider this perspective alongside the ‘poor craft’ that seems distinctive to Australia. Maybe it is a way of positioning artistic creativity in a deeply egalitarian culture.

Winton does not write about grand tours through Europe. He writes about surfing, sport and lonely adolescence. His focus on the immediate common world makes him a writer we can call our own, as Chileans identify with the poetry of Pablo Neruda.

The past re-stitched

Towards the end of the Spanish Civil War, the Chilean poet and communist Pablo Neruda organised a boat to enable endangered by the political to the right in Spain to find exile in Chile. Among the refugees in the Winnipeg was Madrid artist Roser Bru. She became actively involved in the Allende period and was commissioned to produce a large textile work for the UNCTAD building, constructed in 1971 for the Third United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

The work was lost after the coup which saw Pinochet come to power. However, it has been recently discovered by an art collector Eduardo Artino, who has paid for its restoration. In the photo above you see the artist (in her 90s), with restorers Paola Moreno and Anna-Maria Rojas.

It was an historic moment as the artist could look on her work after 36 years, and see it being carefully restored to its original condition. Here’s a very concrete form of reconciliation, using the strong craft skills surviving in Chile to repair the link with a past that was so violently torn apart.

What to do with guanacos?

The adventure for craft in the University of Valparaiso continues in 2008. Last year, I witnessed the design students attempt to develop product out of a remote stony Chilean village at the end of the road called Pedernal. This year, their enterprising teacher Patty Gunther takes them to La Ligua, a centre for handmade textiles.

The students are working on a project managed by Claudia Cajtak called Wanaku. The project emerges indirectly from one of the main industries in the area, turkey farming. The company Sopraval has sponsored the project to make something of the small stock of Guanacos, which produce a fur excellent for spinning and weaving.

La Ligua is famous for a number of unique features. As a textile centre, it specialises in handmade jumpers, which you can see hanging from the front of houses. All the weavers are male. The women specialise in sweets, and a characteristic feature of the town is the palomita (little dove), a woman dressed in a white apron waving a white flag advertising the tooth-shattering confections.

The visit to La Ligua was carefully choreographed. We started by meeting the source of project at the Guanaca farm. Along with us was a local spinner Ondina de Carmen. Despite working with the fibre all her life, she had never actually seen a guanaca in reality. She brought her three

daughters along and the family seemed thrilled with the

experience. Ondina then demonstrated how to spin the fibre, using a very crude spindle weighted with a steel nut and rotating on a broken ceramic plate. The students seemed completely fascinated by this exercise in craft magic, though only one young girl was brave enough to try it out herself.

We then visited the home of one of the weavers. The man’s looms were located in his backyard under a crude shelter with lumpy mud floors. They looked crudely constructed, but appeared to work very well. Elsewhere in the garden, the fig tree was in full fruit attracting swarms of bees. The scene was echoed by us city-dwellers, with our little silver boxes, swarming over the rich material scene, gathering up raw substance for our cameras. The scene offered an unmediated world that seemed totally innocent of design. So what might design make of this?

Talking with the manager, Claudia Cajtak, it is clear that Wanaku is not a simple exercise. Though the local participants seem very keen and excited to be part of it, it may not be so easy to convince the rest of the population, which is fraught with small town rivalries.

So what should the students offer as a way of developing the rich potential of this area? What kind of compromise will be necessary to help preserve and strengthen the local culture? Time will tell, but it moves slowly in La Ligua.

Their ‘artesanía’ is our ‘folk-art’

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The in-flight magazine for LanChile identifies the position of craft in Latin America. It uses the Spanish work ‘artesanías’, which is usually translated as ‘craft’. However, in in the bi-lingual magazine, it is translated instead as ‘folk-art’.

Why use this term? The writer María José Villanueva positions artsesanía as a counterbalance to globalisation. It responds to questions about who we are and where we are coming from:

Folk art, now updated with a node to contemporary design, continues to provide answers to these existential questions, but with a twist: ‘folk chic’ or folk-art is emerging as a commercial niche that stands in stark contrast to mass-produced homogeneity.

These are noble sentiments which position craft as an alternative to dominant trends in modernity. But why ‘folk-art’? What has happened in the process of ‘updating’?

‘Craft’ has more of an emphasis on skill. It most often represents a body of techniques that are preserved and reproduced by a group of skilled practitioners. As such, it can be elitist and exclusive.

‘Folk-art’ is more democratic. It responds to a humanist sentiment and celebrates expression and the handmade.

While ‘folk-art’ seems more appropriate to our times, it does come at a cost. The demands a much lower level of skill than traditional craft. Ironically, it is a much more urban phenomenon, as harried city-dwellers seek the imaginary sanctuary of the handmade object.

The same could be said for the ‘neo-folk’ scene in Melbourne. What’s curious here is that the term ‘artesanía’ contains both traditional and modern concepts. It is only in the English word of ‘folk’ that the urban concerns are expression. I hope to find out more about the way this term operates, particularly in Chilean universities where craft is still taught.

The hunt begins…

First thing this morning Clifford Charles dropped into the B&B and we went for a walk over the rocks. He told me that the South African reggae star Lucky Dube had been killed outside his home in Johannesburg. This seems particularly sad news given that one of the Dube clan, Hlengiwe Dube, was playing such an important role in the gathering. The struggle is certainly not over in South Africa.

I bumped into Ma Kushu. In conversation, she introduced the phrase, Kudamba Ezingelayo, or to catch something, you need to hunt’. This seemed a key message for the day.

The talking proper began at Uncle Tom’s Centre, Soweto. The group of 20 core participants started their introductions when we were joined by another 20 unanticipated arrivals from the township of Katlerin. This was awkward at first, but their presence in the end did help open the discussion. Though mostly young and in the performing arts, they did bring enthusiasm and hope.

Clifford began by provoking the panel with the ‘artist as tourist bus driver.’ Sharlene Khan made a statement about lack of change in South Africa. Khwesi Gule repeated the story of the lucky turkey that he used in Santiago. Bandile the poet argued that we have to bring the meaning of our culture home, rather than making something for the eyes of the tourist. Thembinkosi talked about the power of art to provide hope and used the example of how he had been fascinated with the power of flight which he expressed by drawing acts of flying — that creativity can be an act of empowerment.

Khwesi then talked about the divide between art and craft and the different values attached to each. He said this was due to structural factors that we can’t control. Thembi objected that we can control those factors. We can make spaces for craft. It is important to move away from the trap of being victim. He explained that South Africans don’t have psychoanalysis, so they need art to work things out.

After some more discussion, the veteran Charlicks bellowed ‘I’m confused’. He said that art was ‘an ordinary thing’ and there was too much academic talk in the determination of what’s of value. ‘It’s the song of they day. We should sing it!’ Sara Thorn said there was a stronger sense of community here than in Melbourne. Sharlene argued that there was a market for art among black people, not just rich whites. Thembi recommended that we start small, use the power of ubuntu to start building an audience. He ended with the advice that we ‘find the possible in the impossible’.

The discussion as a whole as quite fluid and helped introduce ourselves to each other. Lunch was Mogodu (stomach) and we were given a performance by the students of Katlerin which included dance and recital. Afterwards, someone brought out a guitar and a number gathered around for some songs. The Claudio Torres strummed some powerful Chilean role. Bule responded with a lyrical lusophone song.

The afternoon workshops then followed. I elected the workshop on global and local by Khwesi Gule. The number kept growing and by the time we had finished out introductions it was almost time for it to be over. While we didn’t get around to defining the issues, we did at least get to know each other.

In the evening, a core core group went to Kliptown for the discussion with Khwesi and Maree. But there was a sense that there had been enough talk already and the formal session was abandoned.

The hunting started with great verve, but dissipated as the day went on. There’s a strong sense of shared humanity, but without structure it is difficult to build anything more solid.

South of Madrid

It’s hard not to enjoy the spectacle of oil paintings in the Prado museum. The vivacity of Velazquez is compelling. But the audio that accompanies the collection goes on ad nauseum about what ‘masterpieces’ they are. You soon realise that your enjoyment is being channeled into an imperial mindset. The vertiginous scenes of baroque paintings such as Titian seem to celebrate the verticality that separates the higher from the lower orders. I think it would be much more interesting to look at these paintings outside the Prado, say over with the colonials at Casa America.

Casa America is an centre for Latin American culture in Madrid. As part of their VivAmerica Festival, they present an exhibition from the southern continent called Iberomerica Global – Between Globalism and Localism. The theme deliberately avoids an ethnographic context and instead contextualises the ex-colonies with an issue that applies just as easily throughout the world as a whole. As it is, this approach falls into the easy solution of exploring ‘diversity’. While it is difficult to find a dynamic thread between the works, some are interesting on an individual level.

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Gaston Ugalde’s installation is a macabre-comic gathering of scarecrow like figures, hung in contorted poses with heads crudely fabricated from traditional textiles. The work comes endorsed by Ticio Escobar, curator from Paraguay, and thus seems to be a case of found folk art. The text identifies the figures as part of a popular push to dissuade young people in La Paz from crime. In another century, they might have used real heads on stakes. While the work is affective, the anthropological method leaves many questions unanswered, such as how the makers of the original figures participated in making the art. The rest of the exhibition is mostly conceptual work that appears sophisticated but leaves the viewer tepid. The default position towards the ex-colonies appears to be a victimary scene of criminal violence.

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There are many talks associated with the festival. I was at a session with Sergio Cabrera (Colombia), Arturo Corcuera (Peru), Rodrigo Fresan (Argentina) and Carla Guilfenbein (Chile). I may have been projecting, but they did seem a little awed by the colonial hub. But there was much interest from the floor. In attempting to find a common link between them, they did discuss the sense of responsibility for a people that weighs on them. However, there seemed to be no talk of Indigenous literatures.

Whatever the faults, it’s hard to imagine a similar festival in London with representatives of the English-speaking south. Perhaps it’s not speaking English that brings them together.

First results from Pedernal


Design students from Valparaiso University showed the first results from their workshop with residents of Pedernal. These are early days, as the students explore how products might be developed that relate to life in this remote village and also activity engage the residents in their production. The next phase is the response of the residents themselves. Let’s see what unfolds. Given the interruptions due to the closure of the university for 50 days, the results are quite remarkable.
The images also include some recent shots from Santiago and can be seen in full here. This includes the ironic exhibition Hecho en Chine (Made in China) by Chilean painter Bruna Truffi and the Museum of Shadows, otherwise known as the Museo de Artes Decorativas in Santiago.