Tag Archives: skill

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.

Time to take a front seat

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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.

When there’s no one left to make things

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Perucci factory closing down

For many years, I’d been intrigued by the factory located on my route to Brunswick Station. The claim to be ‘Actual Makers of Craftsman Tailored Shirts in the European Tradition’ seemed almost medieval in a contemporary retail culture of brands.

So I was quite sad to discover that it was closing down. Why? Today I went it to find out the reason this venerable business was coming to an end. Inside I was met by the ebullient owner, Bill Perucci. Bill was more than happy to take me through the epic story of Perucci Shirts to its current demise.

It appears that he acquired the shirt business from his Jewish father-in-law, an Epstein who escaped from Radom in Poland just before the Second World War. Epstein had been running a fruit business and was looking for something different. A friend approached him to be partner in his shirt business, offering to teach him all that he needed to know. After the partner’s marriage breakup, the wife’s new husband became the business partner.  Neither he nor Epstein knew anything about shirts. It was left up to one of the workers to teach them the business.

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Bill Perucci with the first shirt made in the factory and the photo of his parents in law

Eventually they relocated the business from Lygon Street Carlton to its present Brunswick premises. Epstein eventually passed the business down to his educated son-in-law. They invented a new brand, Perucci – a mixture of letters of Epstein and his original name Russeck. Bill then changed his name to his brand as that would be easy for business.

And the business flourished, with the assistance of skilled labour coming from Italy, Greece and Vietnam.

So why are they closing? Is this part of the economic downturn? Do people no longer care for ‘craftsman’ made shirts?

Far from it. According to Bill, demand has never been stronger. The problem is that all their skilled staff have all eventually retired, leaving them without anyone who can make shirts. ‘We’ve been sacked by our workers!’ Bill exclaims.

Now that unemployment is rising, and globalisation is fraying at the edges, the closure of Perucci sends an important message. Perhaps it’s not only outside pressures that are affecting economies like Australia’s. There may well be inside forces eating away at our capacity as well.

The ‘Art of Making’ in Castlemaine

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Typical Castlemaine scene of detritus from the mechanical age

While much of regional Victoria is recovering from the devastation of recent bushfires, something positive beckons in the horizon. The central Victoria town of Castlemaine is home to a long tradition of making. Artisanship continues from its early days as a gold town to the present population of artists and makers who keep the foundries and workshops busy.

Here’s the media release for an upcoming Castlemaine Festival (27 March – 5 April) that draws from this heritage:

This year introduces the inaugural 2009 Castlemaine Visual Arts Biennial with the theme of The Art of Making: invention and artisanship. Invention is about resourcefulness and pursuing original ideas to create unique solutions. Artisanship is about the process of making, often by hand, objects that resonate with the finely honed skill of the artist. Artists will talk about these and other key ideas, including methodology and technique, public and private space, urban and regional perspectives, and sustainability. The 45 artists participating in the Biennial were selected by The Biennial curatorial team: Dr Chris McAuliffe, Kevin Murray, Julie Millowick and Visual Arts Coordinator Zoe Amor, and are all Victorian.

Castlemaine’s iconic Market Building will show 3-dimensional works, 2-dimensional works will be shown at the Continuing Education building, and public art installations will be located throughout Castlemaine. The 3-D artworks in the Castlemaine Market Building include work by artists including Kerry Cannon, Noah Grosz, Kate Meade, Kathryn McAllister, Jane Sanderson, Dean Smith, Trefor Prest, Gretchen Hillhouse, Ricky Swallow, Marcos Davidson, Nicholas Jones, Conrad Dudley-Bateman, Kate Spencer, Brydee Rood, Lynette Wallworth, Helen Bodycomb & Vipoo Srivilasa. An installation of contemporary lapidary jewellers will be curated by Lillyan Shirrington.

The Castlemaine & District Continuing Education building will be the venue for 2-D artworks by artists including Tim Jones, Raafat Ishak, Wendy Stavrianos, Donna Bailey, Steph Tout, James Kenyon, Martine Whitcroft, Jennifer Bartholomew, Tamara Marwood, Helen Seligman, James McArdle, Kynan Sutherland, Juliana Hilton & a collaborative piece coordinated by Ashley Mariani.

Public art installations will be located at various sites throughout Castlemaine, including Victory Park, Castlemaine Railway Station and at road entry points to the town. Six local public artists — Lynne Edey, Craig MacDonald, Greg Smith, Roger McKindley, Candy Stevens & James Kenyon – will express a unique vision for the central Victorian landscape; drawing attention to the cultural, environmental and historical qualities of this region.

Other venues include the Old Plumber’s Shop, where Alice Steel will launch her comic SPACEANGEL, & the Old Castlemaine Gaol, where Robyn Spicer, local illustrator, designer & writer, will show Weird Critters.

On each day of the 2009 Castlemaine State Festival there will be free talks by artists, to facilitate the engagement of the public with the artists and their ideas. Artists include Donna Bailey, Steph Tout, Helen Bodycomb, Marcos Davidson, Kerry Cannon, Greg Smith, Roger McKindley, Candy Stevens, Gretchen Hillhouse, Tamara Marwood, Helen Seligman, Kynan Sutherland and Robyn Spicer.

Here’s good reason to return to central Victoria for the healing autumn breezes and mysteries of making in the venerable country town of Castlemaine.

A third hand between craft and trade

Christine Nicholls celebrates an exhibition that brings people of craft and trades to work together.

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‘Trades’, an innovative project conceived and sponsored by Craftsouth, Australia’s premier contemporary craft and design association, was that organization’s big ticket offering for 2008. In some respects Craftsouth operates along the lines of the artists’ and artisans’ guilds of yesteryear, offering a range of services to its membership, including the provision of professional accreditation and artist insurance. Craftsouth also plays an important advocacy role for its members. This includes mounting at least one major exhibition of members’ artwork, annually.

The Trades project was conceived towards the end of 2006 and unfolded over an extended period of time. This process-driven venture culminated in a splendid, well-received exhibition of the same name at Adelaide’s prestigious JamFactory late in 2008.

Eight practising visual artists working across a range of different disciplines were selected to work cooperatively with eight qualified tradespersons. Each artist was paired or ‘matched’ with a tradesperson. This pairing was not arbitrary but based on participating parties’ professional and creative aspirations. Each participating artist elected to collaborate with someone with a specific trade and skill set, for the purpose of skills exchange. Hence the relationships were underpinned by mutual respect and recognition of the professionalism of the contributing parties. The idea was to give the participating artists the freedom and opportunity to explore, as Craftsouth’s Niki Vouis has written, “specific skills and industry knowledgenot normally available to them in their day to day work practices” and also to provide “the tradespeople [with] the opportunity to experience…artists’ working methods, while at the same time demonstrating their own expertise and creativity”.

While the project was by no means narrowly ‘product’ or outcome-orientated, there is absolutely no doubt that several of these creative fusions produced marvellous results. This became evident in the 2008 Trades exhibition. One reason leading to this success was the fact that the individual ‘track records’ of both participating artists and tradespersons were carefully scrutinized prior to the commencement of the Trades project. Commitment from each party was sought and obtained. Whilst in progress the project was also monitored and quite closely documented.

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Collaboration between furniture maker Adrian Potter and tattooist Amy Duncan

A number of extremely successful, albeit left-of-field, collaborations took place. One such partnership occurred between Adrian Potter, a qualified engineer who has worked as a professional furniture designer and maker for more than a decade, and Amy Duncan, a tattooist. The collaborative work made by this artistic ‘odd couple’ and exhibited in the 2008 exhibition drew widespread admiration.

Potter drew upon his woodworking skills in his expert carving of two beautiful hollow conch shells from Huon Pine, a very large, relatively soft-wooded tree native to Australia’s Tasmania. Part of its aura derives from the fact that it is believed to be the longest-living species of tree in Australasia: it has been ascertained that in the Tasmanian rainforests there are Huon Pines in excess of 1,000 years of age. Huon Pine wood is also renowned, in Australia and beyond, for its aesthetic qualities.

Having incorporated a number of ideas inspired by Amy Duncan’s craft into his carvings, Potter passed on the larger of the two carved objects to Duncan, who subsequently designed and applied the remainder of the surface decoration. This involved the youthful tattooist working with her customary tools of trade – drawing inks, gouache infills and inlays – to decorate the conch shell carved by Adrian Potter. Duncan’s ability to execute designs and drawings on to three dimensional, curved body surfaces ‘translated’ very well to this new medium.

The artworks created by Duncan and Potter working together on this project exceed anything that either party could have created solo, as Adrian Potter freely acknowledges: “I’ve always thought that ‘collaboration’ is a fancy name for teamwork – I’ve got the skills, you’ve got the skills. We [were] working together to come up with something that you can’t do individually”.

The creative synergy forged by this pair of artists – one of whom mostly works in the relatively mainstream activity of furniture making, while the other is habitually employed in the more socially marginal pursuit of tattooing – opened up a genuinely ‘transitional space’ for both parties. In a sense, the compelling carved and decorated objects co-created by Duncan and Potter and displayed in the Trades exhibition bore the artistic ‘signatures’ of both – while at the same time giving rise to a third, unique artistic inscription that could not be said to belong exclusively to either party. A major reason for favourable critical attention enjoyed by the Potter and Duncan’s co-created artworks in the Trades exhibition was their subtlety and their integrity as artworks – their ‘seamless’ quality. With respect to their Spring Blossom Tattoo, for instance, it was not at all apparent that two persons from entirely different disciplines and backgrounds had had a hand in the work’s creation.

[See Adrian Potter’s comment below about the nature of the collaboration]

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Collaboration between glass artist Gabriella Bisetto and scientific lamp worker Monte Clements

Another extremely productive working relationship was forged between Monte Clements, a scientific lamp worker, and Gabriella Bisetto, an established glass artist. Clements has worked in his highly specialized field for three decades, and runs a thriving Adelaide-based business. Unfortunately, to some extent his is an endangered, if not dying art. As the Trades catalogue states, scientific lamp workers “…blow Pyrex glass to produce precision instruments for various industrial sectors, from scientific laboratories to wineries. This is an extremely rare trade in Australia, with only one current apprentice nationwide”.

Glass blower Gabriella Bisetto deliberately chose Clements as her mentor because she had for some time nurtured an aspiration to learn scientific lamp work. Part way through the project Bisetto observed that:

I’d wanted to do scientific lamp work for a long time but I wasn’t sure what the material could offer or what was available in pre-fabricated glass. And while I might blow glass for several hours a week and successfully produce several objects in that week, in lamp working I can work for hours and only produce one thing, and then it breaks. And that’s because I don’t know how to do it. I haven’t been doing it for thirty years. But working with my mentor, it’s made me want to show him that I really appreciate the time he puts in, but also to feel confident that I will get to my end result over a period of time.

And indeed, working together they did eventually arrive at that desired “end result”. The co-created Bisetto and Clements artworks in Trades are stunning. For example, their compelling work entitled Anatomy Study # 1-3 and Growth – Cluster cells # 1-3, is elegant, refined and beautifully made. The Bisetto/Clements glass works displayed in the Trades exhibition were not mere curiosities but ethereal, poetic artworks in their own right.

Under Clements’ tutelage, Bisetto worked on creating miniature glass bacteria, tiny glass moulds and fragile cluster cells, and small, delicate intestines and glass lungs. “Conceptually it allowed me to move in a different direction,” says Bisetto, “on a scale and with outcomes I couldn’t achieve with hot glass. I’m making tiny work now!” Prior to embarking on the Trades project, Bisetto was already well regarded in Australia as a ‘fine art’ glassmaker, and the working relationship with Clements seems to have enabled her to take her work to a new level. Open-ended dialogue, the sharing of ideas, mutual respect and the acceptance of the occasional wrong-turn or even mistake seem to hold the key to this successful artistic partnership.

Bisetto and Clements’s successful partnership, involving the meeting place between science and art, reflects and confirms the findings of Melbourne-based Charles Green in his canonical study of collaborative practice in contemporary art. In his monograph entitled The Third Hand, (2001) Green, who over the years has collaborated extensively with his artist wife Lyndell Green, theorizes post-1960s artistic collaboration and teamwork as akin to the development of a “third hand”. This, Green posits, is tantamount to the emergence of a new, single, transcendent artistic persona that virtually obliterates the separate artistic identities or the previous artistic ‘signatures’ of individual team members. Clearly Green’s concept of “the third hand” also has implications for other participants in the Trades project, as well. Green’s notion also mirrors broader contemporary social understandings with respect to the changing nature of artistic authorship.

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Collaboration between sculptor David Archer and plumber Rod Archer

Brothers Rod Archer (a plumber) and David Archer (a sculptor) opted to work together, coming up with what was incontestably the hit of the Trades exhibition – at least with respect to mass audience appreciation. The Archer Bros’ work, entitled Pearls Before Swine, is a water powered mechanical pig fashioned from polystyrene, metal, plastic, and recycled bicycle parts. Pearls Before Swine wouldn’t have seemed out of place in the Penny Arcades of earlier eras. On the Trades exhibition’s opening night the crowd gathering around this exhibit made it difficult for many people to get close enough to view this wondrous mechanical pig. Some pig!

The pig swallows large pearls that enter its mouth in a continual loop. The plumber brother cleverly created a revolving internal trajectory powered by water energy. In turn, the pearls that the pig is constantly consuming are ‘excreted’ or converted into a continual succession of big, joined sausages. A string of enormous sausage-excreta continuously pop out of the pig’s rear end. No doubt this repetitive cycle to some extent alludes to some of the less pleasant aspects of plumbers’ daily working lives, and maybe in the lives of sculptors and craft persons too. Shit happens.

David Archer’s sculptural works have been influenced by his interest in clay and in mechanical things. The appeal of the mechanical was reinforced by a coincidence in Archer’s life, when he was offered the opportunity “to restore and repair a genuine coin-operated amusement machine, a Bolland Brothers ‘Haunted House’…[and as a result] I was inspired to make large coin-operated cabinets, and made my own version of a haunted house”. This in turn stimulated David Archer to research the history of automata, which he has traced back as early as the ancient Egyptians. The fact that he chose to work with his plumber brother is therefore a logical extension of this long-term interest.

From the perspective of Rod–the-Plumber Archer, it seems that he is the kind of ‘decent Aussie bloke’ who simply enjoys assisting other people in realizing of their visions and aspirations. Having worked as a plumber for 25 years, in a variety of settings including construction, domestic, and high-rise locations, Rod Archer regards both functional and aesthetic elements as significant. Brother David describes Rod Archer as a ‘thinking plumber’. (Trades catalogue, 2008, page 8).

The Archer brothers’ scatological, mechanical pig sculpture wallowed in immense popularity for the entire lifespan of the Trades exhibition. Pearls Before Swine succeeded in attracting numerous punters beyond the art world’s ‘usual suspects’ and opening-night-attendees. No doubt in part the swine’s widespread appeal was in part a function of the work’s popular culture connections with fairgrounds and amusement parlours. Groups of mesmerized schoolchildren also gathered around the pig, possibly relishing its propinquity to, or commensurability with, playground ‘poo’ jokes.

In fact, Pearls Before Swine, along with the works co-created by the tattooist and the furniture maker, brought many people to this exhibition who had, almost certainly, never before entered an art gallery. Such audience development was an immense ‘plus’ for the Trades exhibition. It is no crime to make art accessible and certainly not a sin to be popular. The fact that a number of these co-authored works attracted different demographics and age groups should be seen as a real strength of this exhibition and therefore applauded. It happened because these works straddled various artistic disciplines and trades, and also, because a number of the works embraced or crossed over into popular culture. Attracting audiences beyond the ‘same old, same old’ Adelaide visual art aficionadi is not easy, and to do so without resorting to Damien Hirst or Jeff Koons-like populism, not to mention without the financial backing that underpins the success of such artworld luminaries, is rare. While the success of the Trades exhibition was on a more modest scale than that of such ‘big names’, in terms of its budget and scope audience responses to Trades were more than encouraging.

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Collaboration between ceramicist Irianna Kanellopoulou and pastry chef Kirsten Tibballs

Ceramicist Irianna Kanellopoulou worked with pastry chef and chocolatier Kirsten Tibballs to create a delectable, although non-caloric sculptural installation of vividly coloured bunnies. Entitled Hopping Bertie and his friends, this artwork was fashioned largely from chocolate and vegetable dyes that seemed to have a similar consistency to Estapol. This (perhaps misleadingly) ‘edible art’ was another real audience sweetener.

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Collaboration between textile artist Annabelle Collett and electrician Jethro Adams

The artworks created by electrician Jethro Adams in partnership with textile artist Annabelle Collett were – well, electrifying. This team created two major works, the first a bright orange hammock, finger-knitted from plastic coated electrical wire, top-and-tailed by four light globes exuding a dazzlingly intense light. Electric Hammock also has a symbolic dimension, alluding to the chronic inability of members of our strung-out, high-powered society to relax in any truly meaningful way.

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Collaboration between textile artist Annabelle Collett and electrician Jethro Adams

Collett professes a longstanding interest in what she describes as ‘crossover’ work and this was evident in the lighthearted, playful, electronic textiles on display in Trades. The Collett/Adams creative team’s edgy, wittily named installation, Mrs Tesla’s Dress, comprising white, knitted electrical cord, electrical components and globes, hanging from the ceiling of the exhibition space, simulated the ball gown of a glamorous lady. Ballooning out on the gallery floor into a full, although diaphanous skirt, its ‘hem’ was bedecked with generous-sized, rather hazardous-looking light globes. While perhaps a little dangerous as a form of daily apparel, Mrs T’s dress created quite a buzz and made a significant contribution to the Trades exhibition. (For the uninitiated, please note that a ‘tesla’, symbolized by the letter ‘T’, constitutes a standard measurement unit of magnetic flux density).

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Collaboration between ceramicist Maria Parmenter and arborist Andrew Willsmore

Maria Parmenter, a respected Adelaide-based ceramicist, worked collaboratively with arborist Andrew Willsmore to create an installation of small, rather abstracted tree-shaped ceramic forms, entitled Utopia Avenue. This diverse row of miniature ceramic trees, not conforming to any single shape or colour, made for a fetching work. (DSC0022) In a second conceptual work, entitled Keep Safes, Parmenter made protective coverings for tree stumps. The latter work articulates with Parmenter’s previous work as a physiotherapist. Drawing an analogy between the missing limbs of humans and the arbitrary chopping down of trees, Parmenter remarked, “I’ve trained as a physio and I’ve worked with amputees. [In Australian society] we keep on lopping things off trees…and exposing stumps everywhere…I want to cover them up and [so] I’ve been making little caps for the stumps. Things to keep them warm.

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Collaboration between ceramicist Maria Parmenter and arborist Andrew Willsmore

For Parmenter, the Trades project and exhibition also presented a unique opportunity – that of extending the interior world in which she habitually works as a ceramic artist – to embrace the exterior world that Andrew Willsmore inhabits on a daily basis.

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Collaboration between glass artist  Deb Jones and panel beater Hugh Gooden

Finally, panel beater Hugh Gooden worked with JamFactory glass artist Deb Jones to make contrastingly shiny, highly polished crumpled metal panels, exhibiting these alongside stripped, rusty panels, whilst installation artist Annalise Rees teamed up with carpenter Jonathan Bowles to create a large scale work using timber house frames covered by stretched organza, stitched with cotton thread.

To conclude, all of the participants in the Trades project and exhibition brought into being fresh, unique creations or artifacts wherein the sum was demonstrably greater than the contributing parts. Particularly in the creative partnerships between the Brothers Archer, and the Potter/Duncan, Adams/Collett and Clements/Bisetto teams, the emergence and materialization of a seemingly autonomous third ‘authorial’ hand, as signalled by Charles Green in his publication The Third Hand, became readily apparent. Where that “third hand” clearly emerged, spectators became genuinely excited about the artworks. It seems that perhaps a necessary pre-condition for this to occur is either for the participants to share a history of working together on a collaborative basis, or to have a pre-existing interest in each other’s line of trade.

Not all of the participants in Trades developed the same synergies or seamless merging of their differing skills and approaches, however. This is not necessarily a criticism of the quality of the work that any of the participants produced: it is simply a statement of fact that in some of these partnerships the approach of one party or the other emerged as the dominant one and this is reflected in the work. In others, the hands of both contributing parties were clearly evident. This too impeded the emergence of that third, transcendent hand.

Craftsouth, especially their Project Manager Niki Vouis, supported by the Director, Anne Robertson, are to be commended for envisioning, overseeing and administering this experimental project linking trades people with craft, design and visual arts practitioners. Equally, JamFactory Craft and Design should be acknowledged for its support for the project from its inception, through to the developmental stage and finally, for their successful hosting of the Trades exhibition, which was accompanied by a very professional catalogue with essays written by Kevin Murray and Mark Thomson as well as information about participants. Bold experimentation and fertile, co-operative partnerships of this kind are indispensable for the continuing health of Australian visual arts. The artistic future lies in this direction.

Reference

Green, Charles, 2001, The Third Hand: Collaboration in Art from Conceptualism to Postmodernism, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, U.S.A.

This is a feature article for World Sculpture News Hong Kong, Winter 2009

See also Symmetry: Crafts Meet Kindred Trades and Professions

A voice for craft in the art tropics

Glenn Adamson’s first visit to Australia was engineered by the current president of the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand, Peter McNeill. On Thursday 4 December Adamson gave the keynote of the AAANZ annual conference at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. Here’s the outline:

Modern Craft: Directions and Displacements

After many years out in the cold, craft is a hot topic for art historians. Received narratives of nineteenth-century imperialist and industrial aesthetics are being displaced by studies that focus on the figure of the artisan. Fixtures in the Modernist firmament, from the Bauhaus to Minimalism, are being re-evaluated according to new ideas about production. Meanwhile, contemporary artists are embracing carpentry and ceramics, and a whole youth subculture is taking up knitting and other hobby techniques. In this talk, Glenn Adamson will provide a brief survey of recent scholarly work. By looking closely at three areas of contemporary practice – DIY protest art, ceramic sculpture, and so-called ‘Design Art’ – he will also suggest where modern craft is heading next.

It was a masterful talk that introduced fascinating new practices, particularly in the agit-prop domain. Adamson continued the line from his book Thinking Through Craft that while craft sits alongside visual art, is still a distinct practice of its own. A particularly charged word in Adamson’s talk was ‘friction’, which was used to express that element in craft that resisted conceptualisation.

The discussion that ensued was very interesting. The last questioner proposed that what made craft different from art was that ‘anyone can do it’. Adamson differed and argued that the ‘friction’ of craft is produced by many years of dedicated training in the understanding of materials. There seems quite a divide between the agit-prop craft that is energising collectives and the specialist craft techniques practiced by artists. How to bridge this divide is a very interesting challenge facing commentators on craft.

Leftover from Adamson’s talk is still the question of craft’s political voice, as it echoes back to the idealism of the crafts movement. Is this just ‘ideological baggage’, ‘academic chatter’, or a rationale whereby so many craft practitioners dedicate themselves to learning skills that may not seem to be overly rewarded in this world?

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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