The Art of Outsourcing

While our romantic inheritance imagines artists working in isolation, this is changing. Increasingly, successful artists are working with teams of technicians who contribute precious amounts of skill, time and experience to the final work. Harvey looks at the relationships between artists, apprentices and their creations within the realm of tactile, three-dimensional art and some of the apparent concerns associated.

More from this Issue

Disorientate: Colour, Geometry and the Body

John Aslanidis, Paul Boam, John Dunkley-Smith, NeilHaddon, John Plapp, Wilma Tabacco Plimsoll Gallery, University of Tasmania, Hobart 15 October - 7 November 2004

Philip Watkins

I Came to Japan Because of the Chopstick

Timms' account of a personal journey through Japan and South Korea and the traditional history of fine pottery crafts that accounts for a large degree of Eastern culture. He here explores the distinctions and connections between Eastern and Western material culture as exemplified through the life and role of the chopstick.

Peter Timms

Batik and Kris: Duality of the Javanese Cosmos

Perc Tucker Regional Gallery 10 September - 7 November 2004

Joanna Barrkman

Parallel Universe: The Gray St. Workshops @ 20

Gray Street Workshop, which is this year celebrating its twentieth anniversary, has pursued a creative work ethic closely aligned to values of the handmade, not as an end per se but as a means to evolve a creative language grounded in the interplay between ideas and practice.

Margot Osborne

Life is Very Long

Yarra Sculpture Space, Melbourne 28 August - 12 September 2004

Cliff Burtt

Calling all Anti-Capitalist Pashtivists, fluxus reincarnators and Crafty Billboard Operators: Documenting the Uncollectable

Royce W. Smith

Hand to Mouse: Design and the Handmade

There have always been cycles in the making of what we describe as art, crafts and design, where surges of new ideas have been followed by revivals of earlier values or reform movements that challenge both. The Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, is working on an exhibition for late 2006, on the interface between art, design, industry and the values of the handmade. Cochranes hope is that it will challenge audiences to look closely at some of the exciting working relationships that are possible.

Grace Cochrane

Artrave

Artlink

The Hand in Making

The Tamworth Fibre Textile Biennial began in 1975 and every two years a collection of contemporary fibre textile work tours nationally to metropolitan and regional audiences. For Attiwill, guest curator of the 16th Biennial, the spark for the exhibition A Matter of Time came from Sue Rowleys wisdom: it is useful to think of craft in terms of multiple temporalities, A Matter of Time is an exploration of this usefulness.

Suzi Attiwill

Pixel Perfect: The Craft of Photography in the Age of Digital Reproduction.

Walkling proclaims that something is being mourned that has to do with the physical object and its associated labour, in the meantime the distinction between amateur and professional photographer is lessening as this particular creative niche is becoming more automated.

Les Walkling

It's Not You, It's Me - I Just Don't, You Know, Think We're Compatible

"It should go without saying that our responses to the handmade, the mass-produced and techno gadgetry are principally structured within and by fantasy worlds. Cook explores peoples relationships to objects in a world that is perpetually developing and enhancing itself materially, or so it seems.

Robert Cook

Living Together is Easy

National Gallery of Victoria: Ian Potter Centre, Melbourne 27 August - 7 November 2004 Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito, Japan 24 January - 28 March 2004 Curated by Jason Smith and Eriko Osaka

Jeff Khan

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