Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought
Issue 12:2 | June 1992
A special issue which in arguing the old art/ craft debate is proposing usable theories for practice. What is the future for craft? Re-evaluating 'women's work', craft, science and technology. Reviews
In this issue
Parables of Criticism
Looks at the current issues in the art versus craft debate and the impact of post modern theories.
Toward a Typology of Small Objects
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.
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.
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........
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?
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.
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.
Distant Lives/ Shared Voices
Written with Janis Jefferies. Discusses the 1992 artist initiated and organised international forum for tapestry weavers in Lodz Poland.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Crafts Come of Age
Book review The Crafts Movement in Australia: a history University of NSW Press $79.95
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."
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
4 Jewellery Co-operatives: Ipso Factory Company
Ipso Facto Company formed in 1984 by 5 ex-students from the Sydney College of the Arts.
4 Jewellery Co-operatives: Gray Street Workshop
Looks at the workshop Gray Street, Adelaide, South Australia.
The Western Way - Linney's, Argenta and Others
Western Australia has a tradition of artist/craftspeople with studio - gallery -shops.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Tasdance in Silk
Exhibition review Greg Leong
Launceston Country Club Tasmania
Anne Newmarch - Superimpositions
Exhibition review Superimposition
Ann Newmarch
Prospect Gallery Adelaide South Australia
23 February - 22 March 1992
...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
Hossein Valamanesh Recent Work
Exhibition review Hossein Valamanesh: Recent Work
Greenaway Gallery Adelaide South Australia
3 May - 3 June 1992
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