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Kindness of strangers at the World Crafts Council Golden Jubilee

Aileen Webb from American Craft Council, courtesy American Craft Council, www.craftcouncil.org

Vicki Mason attempts to distil her experience of attending (as an exhibitor) the World Crafts Council 50th Golden Jubilee Summit, held in Dongyang China, (1822 October, 2014)

I came across a striking image of American philanthropist Aileen Webb recently. In the image Aileen, who founded the World Craft Council (WCC) in 1964, is about to get astride a Norton motorbike, she looks pretty happy. It was not the sort of image I expected to come across given the more staid images my cursory Googling of her had revealed. I could only conclude that Aileen looks like she might well have enjoyed well-crafted vehicular transport as well the sort of craft I associated her with. Aileen’s legacy, through this organisation, lives on and I had the pleasure of being an exhibitor with the organisation as it celebrated its 50th anniversary in October, in Dongyang, China. Hosted by the Chinese, current presidents of this global organisation, about 400 folk attended and participated in the celebrations.

The agenda for the five day summit led to many rich experiences, new friends, craft feasts for the eyes and mind, and many laughs. The opening event had it all: music, symbolic keys, the wearing, raising and waving of flags, speeches full of wise words and balloons. The gala dinner had even more. That night we experienced a fashion show, delegates wearing national costumes, toasts and demonstrations of knife skills and noodle making by highly skilled culinary wizards. Sitting at big tables with strangers meant they weren’t strangers for long after these sorts of displays and antics. Craft was the uniting force at all the events and a curiosity to know more about one another and how craft played out in everyones story led to fascinatingly rich conversations as we made our way around Dongyang.

Vicki Mason with her volunteer helpers

As an exhibitor in the newly minted exhibition building, (which was being finished as we all arrived for set up) and just one of the many shows taking place, I was very taken with the kindness and friendliness of my neighbours from Malaysia who set the tone for the whole event. As a representative of the South Pacific I was in with those from the Asia Pacific subregion and it was the gorgeous Sarawakians who welcomed me for lunch on day one so I didn’t have to eat alone. This welcoming friendliness subsequently led to them helping me with a sale, lending me their power outlet, sharing their deep knowledge about the glorious crafts they had bought to show and sell, and I was even gifted with a piece of jewellery that I will treasure. There are so many warm memories from exhibiting. I loved trying the Chinese sweets and snacks my 21 year old volunteers/translators offered up then winning them over so they could gain confidence in practising their English on me. At the end of the show I realised I had been getting daily visits from a Chinese man. He seemed to just want to hang out, pore over every jewel, try and have bit of a chat and then flick through a sumptuous new book about contemporary jewellery from Australia and New Zealand.

Kevin Murray addressing the WCC Craft Summit

Lectures, meetings, parades, awards, competitions and workshop tours were just some of the activities programmed. While I, like everyone else,  didn’t get to everything due to the con-current nature of running these sorts of large multi stream events, each activity was shared over breakfast or dinner as we all came together. It was so great to find like-minded, warm, generous folk from all around the world who were and are equally as mad about craft in its myriad of forms as I am.

What became apparent to me as I gained a sense of this wonderful international not for profit organisation, is that there is such a rich international craft vein to tap into. All of us were welcomed, whether working with more contemporary approaches to craft or traditionally it’s an all-inclusive group and the richer for it. This WCC summit bottled for a few days the vitality that is craft today. Feeling part of a larger family that I hope I can contribute to in some small way into the future left me inspired. Craft in Dongyang seemed to act as a cultural diplomat of sorts, promoting tolerance, respect and mutual understanding for our common humanity. It pervaded this melting pot event, confirming Aileen’s initial intentions fifty years ago that the crafts can lead us forward perhaps towards a more peaceful future.

Vicki Mason is a contemporary jeweller working from Melbourne in Australia. Vicki would like to thank the WCC Chinese presidency for being such welcoming hosts.

Primitivism without the primitive

Anna Davern, Absent, 2007, reworked tin placemat and biscuit tin, 250 x 200 x 5 mm, Private Collection, Photo: Terence Bogue
The book by Damian Skinner and I, Place and Adornment, was recently reviewed by Grace Cochrane for Art Jewelry Forum. Cochrane is an authoritative craft historian, and her The Crafts Movement in Australia: A History (New South Wales University Press, 1992) is a bible for researchers like myself.

While mostly positive, the review did criticise our use of the word ‘primitivism’. Here’s the relevant section from our book:

Primitivism is one of the main ways that contemporary jewellers in both Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand worked out their relationship to place, in part by making explicit references to indigenous adornment practices. This, as we will show, was less common in Australia than Aotearoa New Zealand, partly because of differences in colonial history, but it was also discarded in Australia because of the ways in which the Australian contemporary jewellers chose to position themselves in terms of place – not by embracing it, and playing up primitivism as happened in Aotearoa New Zealand, but by arguing against the relevance of place to the creative process. Interestingly, some Australasian contemporary jewellery at the beginning of the twenty-first century seems to return to primitivism, but conditionally, as if seeking to create a primitivism without reference to the ‘primitive’.

Primitivism is not the exclusive focus of our history, but it is one of the key threads we found to connect together practices in Australia and New Zealand.

Cochrane offers a concise and lucid review of primitivism in early 20th century Australasia, particularly its implication in the appropriation of indigenous cultures . This criticism helps identify a key issue in our book that warrants further elaboration.

Cochrane states:

the term “primitivism” has not been used to describe contemporary crafts (and I checked with colleagues), not because of our ignorance of the issue, but because many of the so-called “primitivist” influences are in fact continuing characteristics of cultural groups living firmly in the present, and whom we respect.

True, few jewellers used the actual term ‘primitivism’, but nonetheless their statements and creative energy reflect a desire to draw from non-Western cultures. For instance, we quote Ray Norman who critiques the intellectualist bias in Western society: “‘Our society is hung up on words, isn’t it? And all the words keep going on while other “languages” are virtually ignored.’ By contrast, the ‘aboriginal man’ still knows how to feel things intuitively.” (p.90)

The underlying assumption that can be identified as ‘primitivist’ is that the development of Western civilisation entailed an alienation from nature. This has a long legacy in Western thought, stretching at least as far back as Montaigne. His essay on Cannibals in 1577 creates this distinction between natural indigenous and corrupt European:

They are savages in the same way that we say fruits are wild, which nature produces of herself and by her ordinary course; whereas, in truth, we ought rather to call those wild whose natures we have changed by our artifice and diverted from the common order. In the former, the genuine, most useful, and natural virtues and properties are vigorous and active, which we have degenerated in the latter, and we have only adapted them to the pleasure of our corrupted palate.

This concept of the ‘noble savage’ underpinned an Enlightenment quest to think beyond existing traditions and hierarchies. While this seems bold and revolutionary in the North, where the ‘primitive’ culture exists in an exotic and distant location, it is a different story in the South, where those assigned this role actually live.

The situation in countries like the Australia and New Zealand is different. Here post-colonial critique involves a speaking part for these symbols of a more wholesome otherness. Now we hear the other side of the story as indigenous voices speak beyond these Western preconceptions. This argument bites particularly in Australia, with the Marcia Langton debate about the right of Aboriginal peoples to seek mining rights and aspire to the very middle class lifestyles that urban romantics see as inauthentic.

So where is the link today with the primitivism of our naive settler forbears?

Peter Tully Australian fetish 1977, coloured acrylic, coloured oil paint, wood (gumnuts), metal length 37.0 h cm, Crafts Board of the Australia Council Collection 1980, Courtesy of copyright owner, Merlene Gibson (sister)
In writing this book, we were wary of the lure of ‘contemporary’ as a state where past prejudices have been magically transcended. In tracing contemporary practices back to the settler experience we wanted to revalue the primitivist strategy to consider its positive creative potential. The idea of a ‘primitivism without the primitive’ involves taking on its radical energies without using indigenous cultures as an alibi to mask one’s own experience. Whitefellas should be able to  seek a space beyond their inherited European perspectives that doesn’t involve ‘black face’ or other appropriations of indigenous culture. We see a version of that in Peter Tully’s ‘Australian Fetish’, which draws on a colonial concept yet identifies it with Australian popular cultures. His Urban Tribalism uses the space opened up by primitivism to represent city lifestyles, particularly in Gay and Lesbian communities.

The story we seek to tell is the transformation of primitivism from its origins in the patronising colonial mindset to the drive for jewellery to come from its place on the ‘other’ side of the world. This primitivism aligns with the critical force of modernism in contemporary jewellery, particularly in the critique of preciousness. According to this perspective, the meaning of jewellery has been corrupted by the capitalist system that reduces all value to the economic. One alternative lies in a return to the symbolic uses of adornment that preceded modernity. This is one of the unique perspectives that Australasian jewellery contributes to this global movement.

Alice Whish, Touch pins, 2006, 925 silver red and yellow ochre and natural resin, 22mm across and 8mm deep Photo by Orlando Luminere
The issue, then, seems one of terminology. We seek a broader definition of primitivism than that usually ascribed to exotic fascination, such as the inspiration that Picasso drew from masks of the Ivory Coast. In the case of contemporary jewellery, this reflects an interest in the pre-capitalist use of adornment, where it signified social identity rather than personal wealth. This is one of the most powerful references in the critique of preciousness. In this, the Pacific cultures provide important models for non-Indigenous Australasian jewellers. The challenge is to now go beyond appropriation behind the scenes and to engage in direct dialogue, as Alice Whish has done in her collaborations with Rose Mamuniny from Elcho Island.

We also wanted primitivism to include non-indigenous cultures, such as the life of the street that contemporary jewellers have turned to in this century. This turn often presupposes that the energies of the street are more spontaneous and less contrived than the isolated context of the art gallery. Fashion, popular trends, tribal identities and personal narratives can be seen to give ‘life’ to jewellery, in a way parallel to the social function of adornment in traditional communities. This is a concept of primitivism that is embraced by even a resolutely modernist jeweller as Susan Cohn.

Would ‘post-primitive’ better reflect its ironic use in Australia? Maybe. But for every playful Peter Tully, there’s also a serious Ray Norman or Alice Whish. And recently, contemporary Indigenous jewellers like Areta Wilkinson and Maree Clarke seek to recover lost elements of their culture through ornament.

So maybe primitivism can be redeemed as a positive creative energy, once we stop speaking on behalf of others. As the Spanish architect Gaudi said, ‘originality consists in returning to the origin.’

Thanks for starting the argument Grace. To be continued…

Place and Adornment – the jewel in the antipodes crown

Six years ago Damian Skinner approached me with the idea of a joint book about the history of contemporary jewellery in Australia and New Zealand. Damian has an impressive track record in getting books to print, and I’d always thought that the epic story of contemporary jewellery in our part of the world had yet to be fully told.

The trans-Tasman conversation can be testy, but inevitably fruitful. We worked through the obvious difference in the respect that the two countries treated the body ornament of their first peoples. The history of European colonisation in New Zealand involved an appropriation of Māori ornament, while in Australia until recently Aboriginal jewellery was dismissed as childish. Despite this gap, there was a shared experiment with primitivism on both sides of the Tasman which helped lay the ground for a jewellery that was distinct of its place.

Both countries also shared the fortuitous arrival of northern Europeans from the 1960s, who brought with them the calling of modernism. This inspired some key early figures to develop ambitious international platforms, like Cross Currents and Bone, Stone and Shell. The top-down support from bodies like the Australia Council had clear positive results (an important reminder now in this period of neglect for crafts).

Beyond the major events, there were a myriad of smaller experiments, whose relevance might emerge only decades later. It was difficult work distilling so much information into condensed profiles, balancing word count against image size.

The story of contemporary jewellery in Australasia demonstrates that it is possible to develop an art form far from the transatlantic centres. While work from here certainly features strongly in Munich, it also has its own distinct frame of reference. Contemporary jewellery should certainly sit alongside painting, film and literature as an art form that reflects meaningfully on what it means to live on this side of the world. This is  especially the case in Australia, which is so dependent on extraction of precious metals for its wealth.

But the story is certainly not over. Not only are there are many innovative new jewellery practices emerging now, there are also scenes being developed in other countries far from the historic centres, such as India, Taiwan, Mexico, Chile, Argentina and Indonesia. Contemporary jewellery today is a rich global conversation.

And this is only one of the stories to be told about craft in Australia. There are many other remarkable threads where skilled and imaginative artists have learned the language of the land to create something meaningful and original. I think particularly of media like ceramics and fibre (wood generally).

Though relatively young as an art form, craft in Australia already has a legacy that could inspire future generations. We just have to believe that the value of living on this side of the world is what we make of it.

Place and Adornment: A History of Australasian Contemporary Jewellery is distributed by Bateman (NZ), Powerhouse Museum (Aus) and Hawaii Press

Is That All There Is? A talk about exhibiting ceramics

This talk was given by Robyn Phelan for the 2012 Australian Ceramics Triennale Conference, taking up the conference theme Subversive Clay. The following essay is the same talk, re-honed for an online readership.

Is that all there is? Should we expect more from an exhibition of ceramics than just the presentation of crafted objects? For the next 15 minutes I will be expressing observations about recent exhibitions, which have me pondering about how ceramics might be displayed to add deeper meaning and context to the work.

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There is nothing like a bit humour to make one be self-reflective. This Haefeli cartoon in the New Yorker made me consider all spent hours I have spent arranging, grouping, making families, creating belongings and relationship with my ceramic vessels. Perhaps you have lost hours to this pleasure too. But this compulsion to style raises a significant question for me. When presenting work to public and our peers is the relevance of our work only about what appears carefully placed on a plinth?

The balance of scale, colour, texture and all the other formal qualities of art are incredibly important for the impression of a balanced and harmonious exhibition. It is true that the culmination of our craft, is the work that we make and that this must be at the epicenter of an exhibition. But what greater reverberations of meanings and connections can a visitor take away from our exhibition? Can and should we ask of a plinth-based exhibition: Is that all there is? Haefeli’s cartoon reminded me of a particular project by our monarch of “table-scaping”. In 2004, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott was given full access to the ceramic storage which houses the collections of Charles Freer, donated to the Smithsonian Institution in 1906. My fingers itch with desire if I imagine myself in Gwyn’s position. At the National Gallery of Victoria where I worked in collection management, the arranging of objects for permanent display is triumvirate collaboration of effort between curator, designer and installer. Gwyn alone created seven Parades for a permanent museum display freed from connection to maker, country, dynasty or technique. What inspiration might I apply to current installation practice from this project, where the maker only is responsible for its display?

One could apply this approach to a group exhibition where vessels are grouped by formal qualities: an idea, colour, texture or a proposition rather than by maker or making. The opportunity for collaborative curation is boundless. Gwyn’s groupings, released works from museum classification. Imagine an exhibition of new ceramic works alongside works that have inspired and influenced the maker.These muses might be the objects in your studio, gifts, childhood gismos, travel momento, fellow potters work. Melbourne jeweller, Sally Marsland casts vessels and modifies found objects. In her exhibition, Why are you like this and not like that? Sally brings together her crafted vessels, found objects and, delightfully, the coil pot that she had made in secondary school. It was enlightening to witness a continuum of vessel form that has informed her work over many years and remains a strong continuum across a body of work.

Ann Ferguson is a Victorian ceramicist who regularly works on projects with young children and is passionate about interactive experiences. Her 2010 solo show was at Pan Gallery. Along the side of the gallery was a table of pieces to play with. For Anne, play is the important action here, making a direct connection between the artworks, how the pieces interact with each other and how this desire to touch and arrange affects the viewer. Ann was also involved with The Housing Project, a community arts event, which evolved out of community workshops and audio aural recordings from the very diverse neighbourhood of Collingwood. In this work, people are invited to create their own urban soundscape by building a city using miniature ceramic houses, trees, tall buildings and factories. These objects trigger stored sounds and voices to create a multi-layered soundscape that evolves as the pieces are moved around, on or off the platform. I pondered how this complex designed event might inform an exhibition I might do? What I take away from this show is the possibility (if your work is sturdy and you are brave) is to make an exhibition that is totally hands on where the arrangement of work is ever changing. If you are a maker of functional ware, might your exhibition only exist when it is in use and in context? Claire McArdle’s is Melbourne based artist with training as a jeweller and her exhibition Public Displays of Attention, just keeps on giving. A professional photographer was employed to capture each poser. There was an incredible vibe because of the exhibition’s hands-on nature. Here Claire’s primary concern with the body, the exhibition’s title, the crafted silk pieces and the online presence combine in joyous perfection. How a piece of jewellery engages with the human body was crucial to the Public Displays of Attention experience for Claire and her curation of the exhibition is testament to this attention. Is the feel, weight and touch vital to the experience of your pottery or ceramics? How might we be able to record the experience of holding and caressing a work made of clay without ownership as part of the exhibition experience?

Yesterday, Clare Twomey outlined in detail her Trophy project. Her work casts a long and wonderfully challenging shadow of influence on our thinking about we can engage the visitor to our exhibitions.

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In the last six months, there has been a series of exhibitions where contemporary artists have been revelling in the use of clay without particularly paying attention or having a commitment to the ceramic process. I wish to discuss some of these shows because they have forced me to consider the material qualities of clay in a different way to how I would normally engage with an exhibition by a trained ceramicist.

Potters or ceramicists are part of a community of artists who have conquered the transformation of clay, so much so, that we rarely see the potential of the raw earthy stuff that is our beginnings. The flirtation with clay by Melbourne artist is a natural continuum of the last decade where contemporary artists have been using labour intensive skills or adopting the techniques of hobbyist or popular crafts.

Such terms as “hipster craft”, DIY craft come to mind. Ricky Swallow’s mount board architectural models at the 1999 Melbourne Biennial and Louise Weaver’s crochet works were some early forerunners of this approach to making.

Earlier in this conference we heard from Anton Reijnders about how people who are new to clay have a freedom of approach as they don’t know the problems of clay, are completely free and open to the material and don’t set limits to their work. Challenging for me is the low level of craft skill utilized by artists. However, what is inspiring is the honest embrace of material, technique and the desire to create a curated exhibition experience. What can I learn from these recent exhibitions? The Figure and Ground exhibition at Utopian Slumps in April 2012, hit this trend on its earthenware head. Quote from the catalogue essay:

The premise was to present artists who investigate the use of earthenware in contemporary art practices, particularly concerning intersections between ceramics and collage, the human figure and abstraction. The exhibition presents a curatorial interpretation of an archaeological dig by juxtaposing mounds of earth, lumps of clay and fossilised artifacts.

In response, to Sarah CrowEST and Sanne Mestrom’s work, I accepted that fired clay and found ornament could act as idea expanders, value provokers, be banal, hint at history, and force nostalgia to bubble to the surface.

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Rebecca Delange’s talisman-like sculptures urged me to meditate on unfired clay as prop, glue, plinth or stuff.
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The next exhibition to challenge how ceramics can be presented in a gallery context, was at Craft Victoria earlier this year by Perth based potter, Jacob Ogden Smith entitled Pottery Practice Project. In Figure and Ground I relished being reminded that primary clay can be the superstar, Pottery Practice Project, Ogden Smith presents the clay process and ceramic maker as star of the show. It included video of the artist’s flicking of his long hair, attacking the surface of his freshly thrown work in a death-metal, dance-like engagement. A second video recorded his body being tattooed with a Bernard Leach kick wheel. Like a reality television show, we are never quite sure what is true motivation or construct. Kirsten Perry’s exhibition opened yesterday (September 2012 at Lowrise Projects). It is an ode to Fleetwood Mac’s album Dreams.  Here emotional attachment to naively made forms, hark back to first touches on clay that is earnest and unskilled. Perry shuns highly crafted outcomes for the sake of nostalgic effect. And to return to whence I started, the grouping of ceramic objects. Sydney trained but Melbourne based ceramic artist Leah Jackson dreamily suspends or floats on fragile trestles, hand-pinched vessels alongside clay-made things and fragments. An Epic Romance (Craft Victoria, September 2012) consisted of four contained assemblages. Looking at each atmospheric vignette I became conscious of how my viewing of the work was being manipulated from every angle and aspect. Each still life whispered, ‘take me home I am perfectly styled and framed in every way’.

Is this too Vogue Living? Too controlled? Honestly, I enjoyed being romanced.

Note to the reader, August 2014: The parting image presented at the Subversive Clay Conference was that of a single object on plinth. To reverse the provocation of the talk given, I reminded listeners that the eloquence of a singular statement can be striking and the language of the Modernist white cube amp; white plinth allows the viewer the space and quietude to reflect on a work. The above image is of a black glaze porcelain bowl by Prue Venables. Then director Kevin Murray, devoted the entire Craft Victoria space to this work for just one day in 2003. To ask of an exhibition, is that is there is? Sometimes it is suffice to give the answer yes.

Robyn Phelan is a Melbourne based ceramicist who graduated from RMIT in 2010. She also writes, an educator and an enthusiast about craft. Her talk reflects her professional past as a secondary visual arts teacher, her work with exhibitions and objects while working at Museum Victoria, the National Gallery of Victoria and Craft Victoria.

What do we make of Australia?

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At the same time that the long-awaited NAVA National Craft Initiative report was released, the US Whitehouse hosted its first Maker Faire. It makes an interesting comparison.

With the de-funding of Craft Australia, the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council directed the money saved to NAVA, who were charged with writing a report on the craft sector and organising a conference. The report is finally out now and looks an impressive document. It’s especially good at covering the broad spectrum of craft and design organisations. As to be expected, it argues that craft practice is diversifying and needs greater promotion. Hopefully, the document will be useful in arguing the case for continuing support for craft practice, but it should be especially useful as a springboard for discussion in the conference planned for 2015.

It’s worth at the same time listening to Barack Obama’s speech to inaugural the first Maker Faire to be hosted by the Whitehouse. With a great comedic sense of timing – ‘I’m just saying…’ — Obama lists the numerous innovations on display that demonstrate US entrepreneurship. What’s especially impressive is the easeful way he invokes the many individuals involved, as though they are all his buddies. It’s a far cry from the anonymous acronyms and corporations that normally represent technological development. The personalised account matches this form of economic development with a democratic ideology. We are all familiar with this narrative of opportunity and dream – Obama plays it to perfection.

The coincidence of these national celebrations of craft leads us to question what the metanarrative of craft in Australia is, or more broadly what kind of story is leading our creative energy. There’s little in the report about the place of craft in society, and in particular the tension with an extractivist economy that locates value below ground rather than what we can make above it. What does Australia have that matches the English sense of tradition, Italian luxury, Germany technique, Scandinavian simplicity, Indian workmanship, Chinese industry or Latin American folk culture?

While DIY has become official ideology in the USA, it is possible for Australia to make a virtue of its capacity to work in partnership with its neighbours. Australia has the capital that enables it to take risks, offering spaces for innovation. Our neighbours like India and Indonesia have great craft capacity that is currently under-valued. We have an ability to strike a deal between capital and labour that embodies mutual respect rather than race to the bottom. This could be what distinguishes Australia.

I’d argue for Australia’s virtue as a good friend in our region – dare I say a ‘mate’. It’s our capacity to work with others that distinguishes us from other more established cultures. For all the seeming contradictions in this picture, at least it would get the argument started. What do you make of Australia?

Looking through the blind spot

My interdisciplinary arts practice aims to investigate the ‘blind spot’ between nature and existence. Exploring the tension between perception and visibility, my work brings into focus the unseen, overlooked and unforeseeable.

My latest installation project, Blind Spot, Linden Innovators 1: +16 May – +22 June 2014, has been a daring attempt to map out a large three dimensional hole in space. A complex and multifaceted anti-form that is as optically impossible to describe as the space inside an atom. Blind Spot describes one of the most significant environmental discoveries of our age- the Ozone Hole. Like an iceberg looming in space, it is a dark wonder of the natural world, a landmark that cannot be found on any atlas or world map. Its appearance in our atmosphere every spring is a haunting reminder of how we close we come to pushing our environment beyond the point of regeneration. Finding a means to visually and conceptually fathom otherwise unperceivable aspects of nature, the work aims to delineate the blind spot in perception that fails to make the connection between existence and the systems within nature that support it.

Within my arts practice I reinterpret traditional craft based materials and techniques, working with new technologies to find innovative ways to respond to the themes the work addresses. Observing nature filtered through imagery from NASA’s Earth Observing Satellite Data Centre, Earth’s life support systems become visible. This expanded perspective offers a techno-romantic glimpse into the ‘blind spot’ between nature and existence.

Blind Spot is a continuation of my ongoing research. Its trajectory can be seen from my previous series, Life Support Systems, funded by the City of Melbourne Arts Project Grants. Life Support Systems uses NASA’s space suit helmet glass to create a series of three atmospheric weather maps charting shifting weather conditions in the atmosphere over Antarctica that have global implications. The maps are hung sequentially and read from left to right. The unfolding narrative of shifting weather is described in short texts below each work that evolve from history of monitoring Earth’s atmosphere to +today’s attitudes towards Climate Change: the forecast for +tomorrow. The aim of the series was to examine how the forecast for +tomorrow’s weather is reliant on our perception of our environment +today. The work does this by being fabricated from a material that was originally used as a part of the life support system of a space suit and drawing a parallel with its natural counterpart, the Ozone Layer.

Visually we first became aware of the role the Ozone Layer plays in sustaining our environment in the 1950’s Space Race’s iconographic images of the Earth. In these dazzling images Astronauts floated above the Earth tethered to spaceships, the only thing keeping them alive was the fragile life support system of their space suit. One of the most prominent features of the space suit was the luminescent dichroic glass visor that aesthetically resembled a giant mirror or ‘all seeing eye’. This lens reflected thefirst view of the Earth as a tiny fragment in an ecosystem of universal proportions from which no part is immune from the changes of its counterparts. This ignited global research to strive for an expanded awareness of our environment. From this research the Ozone Hole was discovered and +today’s current ecological conundrum revealed.

Today there is a tenuous relationship between the fragility of our environment and its ability to regenerate. The success or failure of this lies in learning how to make the concerns of these invisible aspects of our life support system on Earth visible so that the unforeseeable consequences never eventuate.

Blind spot has been funded by the Australia Council for the Arts and will be exhibited in Melbourne 2014 and Sydney 2015. It is at Linden Gallery until 22 June 2014. See jasminetargett.blogspot.com.

The view on craft from the West–for Form’s sake

The Western Australian craft and design organisation Form has just released a publication New Narratives for Craft: Balancing Risk, Opportunity, Skill, Experimentation that seeks to chart a course for craft in the continent’s largest state. It’s a welcome addition to the nation’s discussion about the state of craft, reminding us how rare it is to find a platform for this kind of discussion after the loss of Craft Australia. It’s particularly pleasing to see it coming from Form, which was one of the organisations that emerged from the corporatisation of craft infrastructure at the end of the 20th century. This involved moving away from the membership model towards broader opportunities for growth. At the time, Form seemed to identify itself against craft, as a redundant subsidised model based on individual expression rather than market and audience needs. Since making the break with studio craft, under the inspiring leadership of Linda Dorrington, Form has realised some epic ventures, such as Canning Stock Route Project, that have re-defined the limits of possibility for an arts organisation. So it’s particularly significant that they now return to the craft conversation. We have a lot to learn from them.

New Narratives for Craft aims to articulate the role for craft in Western Australia. As such, it is quite a sobering tale. Elisha Buttler outlines the challenges of craft, including the need to connect elite practitioners with community and to combat the sense of isolation. Travis Kelleher’s reflection on craft education tells a depressing tale of closures in most of the craft courses in the state. The failure of the Western Australian government to take up the opportunity of the Midland Atelier is a real tragedy. The positive picture is provided by Paul McGillick’s profiles of Helen Britton and Penelope Forlano, which provides models of engagement developed by two leading individual practitioners. But in the end, it’s hard to deduce from the publication what a future path might be for craft in the west.

Much space is given to promoting Form’s achievements. Few would dispute these, but it does make the publication seem more of a marketing exercise than an industry analysis. The cost of corporatising craft in Australia has been a focus on internal marketing, which fails to speak for a broader community. The stellar rise of Critical Craft Forum in the US has shown how quickly a sector can embrace a forum that speaks with a broad voice.

One glaring absence from the publication is reference to the broader West Australian scene. As the dominant economic and cultural force in the state, it seems important to mention the impact of mining. The decline in craft resources that is charted by this publication should prompt some reflection on the costs of extractivism. The radical loss of manufacturing and the fear that Australia is no longer a country that ‘makes things’ does put craft at the centre of an important national debate.

Nevertheless, warm congratulations to Form for a welcome entry into the conversation. But now you’re here, we need your help in facing up to important questions of our time:

  • Can craft practitioners adopt emerging forms of social practice in order to recognise the value in community participation?
  • How can we focus national attention on the costs to our culture in too great a reliance on mining for future prosperity?
  • In what way can we use craft to strengthen our connections in the Asia Pacific region?

Gravity–the GFC comes down to earth

Warning serious spoilers ahead…

Gravity not only promises the kind of thrill and spectacle we’ve experienced previously in films like Avatar and Matrix, it also evokes the lineage of serious metaphysical science fiction, as in Kubrick’s 2001 and Tarkovsky’s Solaris. While it is no doubt one of the best films coming out of Hollywood in recent times, it can’t fail but to disappoint when compared to its forebears. Reviewers regularly note the sentimentalism of Gravity. The dramatic impact of the narrative is often diffused with cliché’s, such as ‘It’s time to go home now.’

So why did Alfonso Cuarón allow this film to be compromised by sentimentalism?

The plot of Gravity seems a clear allegory of the US economy. As in pre-2008 Wall Street, it begins with guys goofing around, playing with their toys. Suddenly out of nowhere, crisis strikes, the result of a chain reaction set off by a Russian decision to destroy its satellite (aka Soviet Union). The hero Ryan Stone finds temporary haven in an abandoned Russian space station, which is rapidly disintegrating (aka the ‘end of history’ utopia promised by the dissolution of the Soviet Union has proved false as Russian returns to its old anti-West aggression). Finally she finds the Chinese space station, which she finally manages to land back on earth (aka China’s economy promises a lifeline to the West, though it too will inevitably fall victim to the cycle of financial crises that is intrinsic to capitalism). Finally she reaches the shore, when she can stand again on her own two feet (aka one day the West will be free of financial uncertainty, and independent of other emerging economies).

Gravity is not unusual in telling a story of the US empire. Star Wars and Star Trek can all easily be read as versions of the national eschatology of universal freedom. But what makes Cuarón’s version particularly interesting is the character of Kowalski, played by the quintessential nice-guy, George Cluney. Kowalski is a strangely disembodied character, telling bar-room stories and offering gentle encouragement – ‘come on, you can do it’. There’s an echo of 2001‘s Hal in the oddly mechanical nature of his dialogue, made even more evident when he re-appears as a hallucination.

Kowalski seems the epitome of the indomitable spirit that is the core of the Hollywood hero. Everything can be reduced to self-belief. Believe in it, and it will happen. So when all seems lost as Stone passes out in the Russian capsule, Kowalski’s imagined advice wills her into action, which according to the iron logic of Hollywood leads to her inevitable escape. It’s as though we doubt that there are still Kowalski’s in the world, yet we are still captive to their story. We cannot do without them. There seems no alternative, other than to spin away into the void.

This is the challenging question posed by US culture. According to Gravity, the imaginative power of Hollywood will eventually prevail over the deeper structural issues that beset the economy. The argument has some juice. The capitalist system does depend greatly on trust and confidence. As a living creature it has the ‘jitters’ and can feel bullish. We are all desperate to encourage it however we can, from stimulus packages to sporting victories.

But inevitably there are limits to what this confidence can achieve. It certainly doesn’t magically make the environment an infinite resource to be mined at ever increasing rates.

So despite its unique post-industrial aesthetic, Gravity seems more of the same. It offers an imaginary logic whose expression in 3D encantment helps us put at bay the niggling doubts raised by economic reality.

And it’s why the world of real things offers a counterpoint to the ever-expanding regime of the screen. The screen is a vertical space where objects float freely, while the bench is a horizontal surface that accommodates things according to the law of gravity.  Will gravity win in the end?

What to make of 2014

Master batik artist Tony Dyer with a young Japanese textile student at the Semarang International Batik Festival in May 2013

Master batik artist Tony Dyer with a young Japanese textile student at the Semarang International Batik Festival in May 2013

One of the major events of 2014 will be the Golden Jubilee of the World Crafts Council, which will be held in Dongyan, China, 18-22 October. It will be very interesting to see how the Chinese presidency of WCC uses this unique occasion to promote local craftsmanship. One day ‘Made in China’ may be something that actually adds value to a product.

The China event will be an important occasion to present the Code of Practice for Partnerships in Craft & Design, which has been developed over the past three years of discussions that were part of Sangam: Australia India Design Platform. We’ll be developing a platform based around those standards to promote fair partnerships between producers and developers. This year, the network will extend to Indonesia, with a workshop at Kampoeng Semarang looking particularly at commissioning of batik artists.

One of the important elements that draws me to craft is the way it engages with tradition. While the modern world encourages freedom, it is hard to conceive of a meaningful life without responsibility. Custodianship gives meaning to our otherwise fleeting lives. And craft traditions require skill and imagination if that are to be something we can pass on to future generations. This involves interpreting traditions through current concerns. As they say, we make it new, again.

This is something quite evident to indigenous peoples, whose own culture is vulnerable to colonisation. Retaining language and custom gives purpose and honour to individual lives in indigenous communities.

By contrast, the dominant white Anglo world seems to require little from us in order to flourish. It runs increasingly on automatic, sustained by machines and global corporations. But there are still buried traditions that we can uncover and pass on. Colonisation involved removing the social value from objects, otherwise considered the primitive domain of fetish or idol. The challenge is to recover social objects such as charms, crowns, garlands and heirlooms that offer a hard currency of interconnection.

Amulets from the Sonara Market in Mexico City - how to turn objects of destruction into agents of good?

Amulets from the Sonara Market in Mexico City - how to turn objects of destruction into agents of good?

The project Joyaviva: Live Jewellery across the Pacific travels to Latin America this year. It will be very interesting to see how these audiences respond to the challenge of designing a modern amulet. Can folk traditions transcend their nostalgia and become relevant elements of contemporary life?

The broader questions associated with this will be played out in a series of roundtables as part of the South Ways  project. This will seek to identify creative practices that are unique to the South. The first one in Wellington will look at the relevance of the Maori ‘power object’, or taonga, to Western art practices such as relational jewellery.

Other projects will help tie these threads together. The performance work Kwality Chai will explore what an Indianised Australia might be like. This relates to the utopia of Neverland, in which Australia becomes a haven for cultures that have no home in the world, such as Sri Lankan Tamils.

Craft keeps us alive to the debt we owe to previous generations. I’m very pleased to be involved with Wendy Ger’s Taiwan Ceramics Biennale where many artists have mastered clay as a language for the unique expression of ideas and values.

So there’s much to be made of 2014. Let’s hope this includes a future for 2015 and beyond.

Farewell to Marea

Ex-Director of Crafts Council of Australia, Jane Burns, gave this tribute to Marea Gazzard, along with Cristine France and David Malouf.

Marea

A remarkable and most distinguished Australian.

I had the privilege of working closely with her in the 1970s and 1980s when she was including national and international crafts organizational responsibilities among her huge bag of activities.

I’m really thankful to be asked to say a few things about her this evening and in Utopia Gallery which was so very important to her. I’d like to dwell briefly on her role as an organizational and visionary leader .It’s a sort of cliché I suppose but Marea had the rare ability to see the big picture and take big and risky steps and she enthused everyone on the way to achieve results.

Marea in the 1960s, – artist, wife, mother of Nicholas and Clea, activist in movements such as the Save Paddington Society and the Save The Queen Victoria Building – was among a select few studio artists in the mediums of ceramics, metal, textile, wood, glass in Australia who understood the need for there to be support systems which would enable them to undertake tertiary training within their discipline, exhibit their work in commercial and other galleries, and for their audience to learn about them and their work. Nowadays we take all those things somewhat for granted. But in the 1960s it was a vastly different story.

No arts white pages directories or internet existed. Without contact points other than personal friendships the select few (including Helge Larsen, Les Blakebrough, Heather Dorrough, Mary White, Joy Warren, Moira Kerr, Fay Bottrell, Peter Travis here in NSW and Milton Moon, Carl McConnel, Joan Campbell and others interstate) formed a Steering Committee in Sydney which set out the ways and means to establishment of a national crafts organization. Marea became the chief of this select group in 1970 when their efforts bore fruit and the Commonwealth Government issued a cheque for the princely sum of $12,000 for the Crafts Council of Australia to come into existence, with Marea as its first President. Sir John Gorton was then the PM and he personally directed Dr. Nugget Coombes and Dr Jean Battersby of the then Australian Council for the Performing Arts to administer this grant rather than the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board. That in itself was extraordinarily prescient because with the election of Mr. Whitlam as Prime Minister, the Australia Council was completely restructured. Marea was invited by Gough Whitlam to be Chair of The first Crafts Board and to develop policies and plans to place the contemporary crafts on an equal footing with art forms of the other seven Boards and within the spectrum of the visual arts. This meant that she had to resign from the fledgling Crafts Council of Australia Presidency, six months after she was elected, and the Vice President, Marcia del Thomas from South Australia replaced her there. In the space of a year Marea went from being Chair of a Steering Commiitee, to President of a new non governmental crafts organization (The Crafts Council of Australia) to Chair of the major governmental crafts organization (The Crafts Board of the Australia Council). Breathless activity by any standard.

When Gough Whitlam asked Marea, along with the other Board Chairs, to nominate a budget figure to cover possible needs she had took an educated guess and asked for 2 million dollars – an unheard of amount then and to put it in perspective, overnight the grant allocation to the Australia Council from the Federal Government went from $4,000,000 annually to $14,000,000. Wise heads and capable hands were needed to administer these funds. Marea surrounded herself with those she trusted to sit on her Board and those who would join the public service on the staff of the Australia Council in the Crafts Board. Moira Kerr and Felicity Abraham were among the latter. Wisdom personified.

It wasn’t a coincidence then of course that Marea was invited from Australia as one of the select group of people from North America, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Africa to take up the challenge of the American philanthropist Mrs. Vanderbilt Webb to form the World Crafts Council. Mrs. Vanderbilt Webb intended this to be a networking link for craftspeople world wide to provide the strength of numbers and opinion, to influence governments.

Marea had artist friends and colleagues as personal contacts in each of those regions, friendships which remained strong throughout her life, and like her these people recognized what a huge advantage the network of these connections could be. The World Crafts Council gradually included over 50 countries and Marea became World President in 1980. It was during her Presidency (again by judicious use of the right contacts and right approaches) that the organization achieved unheard of Category A Status as an NGO with UNESCO. This gave it an annual subvention to establish its own secretariat. And this made it possible for Marea to undertake travel to each of the five regions of the WCC and to play a part in the necessary high level discussions with individual governments which gave national organizations necessary support. She acted in the manner of a diplomat, meeting official people at the highest level and bringing great distinction to the WCC as well as to Australia because of this.

Here in Australia, the Asian Zone of the WCC was set up within the offices of the Crafts Council of Australia and Pat Thompson (writer, scholar and former co-warrior with Marea in the Paddington Society) became its Hon. Secretary.

Many of the legendary stories of these extraordinary times and Marea’s part in the contemporary crafts renaissance of forty or so years ago have been captured in Grace Cochrane’s marvellous history but I hope I’ve given you some inkling of just how pivotal she was in leading the change in the contemporary crafts landscape nationally and internationally.

And also maybe what an extraordinarly busy and interesting life she had.

And throughout all of this heady activity on the organizational front she was also trying at a very high level to pursue her own artistic career. The exhibition with Mona Hessing in 1973 Clay and Fibre at the National Gallery of Victoria which was such a hit with gallery audiences certainly gave the critics of the time something to think about. I remember the outrage when Donald Brook, art critic for the SMH, wrote, with outrage showing in each word, something to the effect that these were crafts people and Marea should get back to making ceramic mugs and Mona to making useful woven rugs. Marea and Mona were completely confident in their work but this was understandably annoying. However, in fact it illustrated so well why they wanted attitudes and awareness to alter.

As an aside here and one of those whose professional life has been in administration of the arts rather than in the practice of it I am always amazed at the generosity of artists who are prepared to give time and energy away from their professional career to ensure the fight for the arts as a government priority goes on.

I’d like to finish with an illustration of Marea’s practical skill and capacity always to see solutions rather than problems.

In 1973 The WCC Secretariat asked her to find a Polish fibre artist Ewa Pachucka who had defected to Australia and could possibly need support to find her feet in this new country. Marea drove a blue mini minor at the time and one morning she arrived at CCA and together we tooled off to Carramar where Ewa and her husband were living in a migrant hostel. How Marea tracked her down I’ve forgotten but such was her brilliance at this sort of tricky thing that I remember it didn’t faze me at all. Ewa and her husband Romek were surprised and overjoyed to see us and even more flummoxed when within weeks Marea had arranged rental accommodation for them in a cottage in Milsons Point and Rudi Komon, had offered Ewa a solo exhibition at his Paddington Gallery for six months time. He knew of her work from exhibitions she had had in London and Denmark. The exhibition at the Rudi Komon Gallery was a sensation and James Mollison acquired major works from it for the national collection. And Ewa began her life as an artist anew in this new country. The sort of fairy story ending in a way to this extraordinary train of events which Marea set in motion, is that both Marea and Ewa were among artists commissioned by Aldo Girgulo and Pamille Berg to undertake major works for Parliament House in Canberra when it opened in 1988, Marea’s bronze sculpture in the Executive Courtyard at the formal entrance to the Prime Minister’s office suite, and Ewa’s stone sculpture in the Lobby Courtyard Garden adjacent to the House of Representatives.

Marea’s place in Australian art history is well assured. It will always be recognized by those who see the Judy Cassab portrait of her at the National Portrait Gallery and through her work in public and private collections. For her friends and colleagues it will be in the knowledge of a myriad of little and big things which she managed so intuitively. She was absolutely a remarkable person and it was a privilege to have known her.

Jane Burns

November 25 2013