Women's Work - Search

With increasing anxiety, we face searching questions of the viability, the integrity, the destiny of craft. In themselves, the questions are salutory and point to an intellectual vitality in craft culture, a vigour and toughness which have not existed since the Arts and Crafts Movement. Responses to the challenge vary from relish in the contradictions of craft practice to the old-fashioned despair for any debate whatsoever.

Robert Nelson

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

The Floating Web

For centuries now, textiles and the skills required in their creation - spinning, weaving, embroidery, sewing, quilting - have been considered women's work, occupying them indoors while men engaged in more serious activities like warfare.

Dorothy Jones

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

Why Craftwork Does Not Compute

Will the computers, mobile or immobile, take over craft work in the near or medium future? Are craftspeople doomed to the fate of the Indian hand loom weavers of the last century-- will their bones bleach the plains? The answer is........

Alan Roberts

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

Craft, Science and the Natural: An Introduction

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?

Jim Falk

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

The Watch, the Pen and the Biro

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.

Pat Hoffie

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

The Archaeological Metaphor: A Personal Excavation

Now as a much older woman with another career as an artist I have been reconsidering my experience in Museums, reconsidering the structures of archaeology which grid and measure the chaotic site.

Diana Wood Conroy

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

Distant Lives/ Shared Voices

Written with Janis Jefferies. Discusses the 1992 artist initiated and organised international forum for tapestry weavers in Lodz Poland.

Kay Lawrence

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

The Reflections of a Taxidermist

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.

Tim Ralph

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

After the Art/Craft debate: Critical Writing into the 1990s

Most writers and researchers in the visual arts and crafts would now consider the debate about the difference between art and craft to be an old chestnut whose day has well and truly gone. Refers to the debates between David Bromfield and Anne Brennan.

Noris Ioannou

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

Touching Things Lightly: The Furniture of Kevin Perkins

Kevin Perkins and the Parish Church of St Thomas Acquinas, Charnwood ACT. A model for collaborative design. Consummate technical skills, the continuance of long-established traditions which focus on excellence and a fundamental reverence for the qualities of the materials are discussion points that are, at times, given minimal attention when the products of today's craftspeople and designer/makers are discussed.

Glenda King

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

Design Visions: International Exchange: Time for a Stocktake

Design Visions; The second Australian International Crafts Triennial on show at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in August September 1992 provided a chance for local viewers, historians, critics, artists, designers and 'craftspeople' to discuss and possibly take stock of our place in the international arena.

Dorothy Erickson

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

Jill Smith: Artist/ Designer in Industry

Looks at the ceramic practice of Jill Smith. It often happens when people with different views and areas of expertise are brought together to solve a problem that something new emerges.

Jenny Armstrong

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

NSW Tafe: A Different Approach to Ceramics

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.

Christine Lewis

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

The Crafts Come of Age

Book review The Crafts Movement in Australia: a history University of NSW Press $79.95

Sylvia Kleinert

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

The Problem of Orthodoxy in Contemporary Glass

In her introductory notes to the exhibition 'Glass: Material in the service of meaning' the artist Ginny Ruffner comments on the current field of glass art as "being awash in objects, some beautiful, some ugly, most about glass itself - material as content."

Geoffrey Edwards

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

Making a Living: The Jam Factory

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.

Stephanie Radok

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

Two Countries, One Weave?

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.

Kerry Giles Kurwingie

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

Marketing from the Top End

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).

Felicity Wright

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

From Italowie to Chambers Gorge - A New Tapestry

When travelling by car over long distances the landscape outside the window endlessly unfolds as a field of subtly carying colour and texture punctuated by the irregular rhythm of straggling trees and bushes.

Kay Lawrence

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

Futurology...Crafts...

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.

Margaret Kirkwood

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

Futurology...Crafts...

David Walker, craft practitioner from Western Australia and active in the Craft Council within his State, writes his prediction for the future of crafts in Australia.

David Walker

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

Futurology...Crafts...

Marion Marshall,craft practitioner from Victoria, and active in the Craft Council within her State, writes her prediction for the future of crafts in Australia.

Marion Marshall

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

4 Jewellery Co-operatives: On Staying in the Black: Fluxus

Looks at the workshop Fluxus in Dunedin in New Zealand, formed by Kobi Bosshard and Stephen Mulqueen in 1983.

Stephanie Britton

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

Futurology...Crafts...

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.

Helmut Lueckenhausen

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

4 Jewellery Co-operatives: On Staying in the Black: Fingers

Looks at the Jewellery Co-operative Fingers formed in 1976 in Auckland New Zealand. Fingers sells the work of 30 New Zealand jewellers with a managment partnership of 6 to 8 practising jewellers. The rest sell on consignment basis.

Stephanie Britton

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

4 Jewellery Co-operatives: Ipso Factory Company

Ipso Facto Company formed in 1984 by 5 ex-students from the Sydney College of the Arts.

Carolyn Meloy

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

4 Jewellery Co-operatives: Gray Street Workshop

Looks at the workshop Gray Street, Adelaide, South Australia.

Sue Lorraine

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

The Western Way - Linney's, Argenta and Others

Western Australia has a tradition of artist/craftspeople with studio - gallery -shops.

Dorothy Erickson

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

Yurundiali - Reasons for Optimism

The predominant group in Moree (outback New South Wales) are the Gomilleroi people who are considered the most cohesive moiety group in Australia. Looks at the indigenous artists co-operative Yurundiali which is marketing its screen print designs.

Janelle Boyd

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

Screenprinting the Tiwi Way: An Element of Spontaneity

It is not accidentatl that amongst the Tiwis of Bathurst and Melville Islands, fabric printing has become such a significant craft form. Of all indigenous Australian cultures the Tiwis historically have perhaps the richest tradition of body painting.

James Bennett

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

The Hermannsburg Potters

The Arrernte people from Hermannsburg a former Lutheran mission about 130 km west of Alice Springs in Central Australia are generally known for their Namatjira style watercolour paintings. Now they are making ceramics.

Beverly Knight

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

Semiotically Speaking: A Craftperson's View

One need not restrict this semiotic approach to an analysis of the objects of fashion given that the major role adopted by craftspeople in contemporary times is that of drawing attention to otherwise ordinary objects and processes by remaking them in a mode other than mass production.

Jenni Dudley

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

Tim Burns - Paintings and Drawings

Exhibition review Cape Bruny Winter 1990 - 1991 Paintings and Drawings by Tim Burns Dick Bett Gallery Hobart Tasmania 7 - 26 May 1992

Peter Hill

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

Tasdance in Silk

Exhibition review Greg Leong Launceston Country Club Tasmania

Jane Deeth

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

Anne Newmarch - Superimpositions

Exhibition review Superimposition Ann Newmarch Prospect Gallery Adelaide South Australia 23 February - 22 March 1992

John Neylon

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

...But Never by Chance..., Skin and From Women

Exhibition review ...but never by chance (eroticism) editor/curator Linda Marie Walker Exhibitors Jennifer Hamilton, Melanie Howard, Bronia Iwanczak, Sheridan Kennedy, Rosemary Laing, Rosslund Piggott, Carol Rudyard Skin Curators Annette Bezor, Julianne Pierce, Exhibitors Maria Kozic, Jan Nelson, Sally Smart, Josie Starrs Contemporary Art Centre Adelaide South Australia May 1 - 31 1992 From Women Curator Vivonne Thwaites Exhibitors Maria Cruz, Michele Elliot, Nicole Page-Smith, Lucia Tancredi Artspace Adelaide Festival Centre 10 April - 23 May 1992

Jude Adams

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

Hossein Valamanesh Recent Work

Exhibition review Hossein Valamanesh: Recent Work Greenaway Gallery Adelaide South Australia 3 May - 3 June 1992

Leon Marvell

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

Contemporary Gipsland Artists

Exhibition review Contemporary Gippsland Artists A touring exhibition initiated by the LaTrobe Valley Arts Centre Morwell Victoria University of South Australia Art Museum 9 April - 8 May 1992

Louise Dauth

Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought