Margaret Kirkwood, craft practitioner from NSW and active in the Craft Council within her State, writes her prediction for the future of crafts in Australia.
There seems to be a consensus that craft is in a state of crisis. But consensus or not, the observation of this alleged crisis is sterile if we do not place it against its background. Is this crisis unique to craft, or is it a manifestation of a more general crisis which extends across other cognate areas? If it is more general, does it nevertheless have special implications for craft?
Written with Phillip (Piri) Everett Over the last year Tandanya (National Aboriginal Cutural Institute) has received much bad publicity but is carrying on and slowly and steadily making history. It opened in 1989 with celebrations featuring Ernabella Inma and Yothu Yindi. Includes photographs of indigenous women at weaving workshops in the South East of South Australia at Camp Coorong Cultural Centre.
To demonstrate the extent to which our relationship to the objects we possess has changed, Kevin Murray recently gave a short impromptu performance during a recent lecture, systematically removing a number of possessions and apparel from his person.
It turned out that 95% of the symposiasts were blissfully unaware that, starting with the TAFEs, they are already in the era of funding allocation on the basis of conceptually incoherent doctrines of an 'arts industry' with about as much relevance to their interests as atonal music has to the board of BHP.
In May 1992, Stephanie Radok spoke to Frank McBride, Peter Tysoe, Stephen Bowers, David Adderton and Greg Healey about recent developments at the Jam Factory Craft and Design Centre in Adelaide, South Australia.
Helmut Lueckenhausen, craft practitioner from NSW and active in the Craft Council within his State, writes his prediction for the future of crafts in Australia.
I view my memories as a fragmented collage of life, constantly in review and abstracted through the shifting of time and place. Taking and putting together some of these fragments I recall how I became a taxidermist.
Representatives from seven screenprint workshops in remote and indigenous Australia came together in March 1992 to attend a textile marketing forum in Darwin organised by Steve Anderson, co-ordinator of ANCAA (Association of Northern and Central Australian Aboriginal Artists).