Thinking Craft, Crafting Thought

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

Published June 1992

4 Jewellery Co-operatives: Ipso Factory Company

Feature

Carolyn Meloy

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

Published June 1992

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

Feature

Stephanie Britton

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.

Published June 1992

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

Feature

Stephanie Britton

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

Published June 1992

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

Feature

Noris Ioannou

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.

Published June 1992

Craft, Science and the Natural: An Introduction

Feature

Jim Falk

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?

Published June 1992

Design Visions: International Exchange: Time for a Stocktake

Feature

Dorothy Erickson

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.

Published June 1992

Distant Lives/ Shared Voices

Feature

Kay Lawrence

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

Published June 1992

From Italowie to Chambers Gorge - A New Tapestry

Feature

Kay Lawrence

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.

Published June 1992

Futurology...Crafts...

Feature

Margaret Kirkwood

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.

Published June 1992

Futurology...Crafts...

Feature

David Walker

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.

Published June 1992

Futurology...Crafts...

Feature

Marion Marshall

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.

Published June 1992

Futurology...Crafts...

Feature

Helmut Lueckenhausen

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.

Published June 1992

Jill Smith: Artist/ Designer in Industry

Feature

Jenny Armstrong

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.

Published June 1992

Making a Living: The Jam Factory

Feature

Stephanie Radok

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.

Published June 1992

Marketing from the Top End

Feature

Felicity Wright

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).

Published June 1992

NSW Tafe: A Different Approach to Ceramics

Feature

Christine Lewis

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.

Published June 1992

Parables of Criticism

Feature

Sue Rowley

Looks at the current issues in the art versus craft debate and the impact of post modern theories.

Published June 1992

Screenprinting the Tiwi Way: An Element of Spontaneity

Feature

James Bennett

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.

Published June 1992

Semiotically Speaking: A Craftperson's View

Feature

Jenni Dudley

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.

Published June 1992

The Archaeological Metaphor: A Personal Excavation

Feature

Diana Wood Conroy

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.

Published June 1992

The Floating Web

Feature

Dorothy Jones

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.

Published June 1992

The Hermannsburg Potters

Feature

Beverly Knight

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.

Published June 1992

The Problem of Orthodoxy in Contemporary Glass

Feature

Geoffrey Edwards

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."

Published June 1992

The Reflections of a Taxidermist

Feature

Tim Ralph

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.

Published June 1992

The Watch, the Pen and the Biro

Feature

Pat Hoffie

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.

Published June 1992

The Western Way - Linney's, Argenta and Others

Feature

Dorothy Erickson

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

Published June 1992

Tim Burns - Paintings and Drawings

Feature

Peter Hill

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

Published June 1992

Touching Things Lightly: The Furniture of Kevin Perkins

Feature

Glenda King

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.

Published June 1992

Toward a Typology of Small Objects

Feature

Robert Nelson

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.

Published June 1992

Two Countries, One Weave?

Feature

Kerry Giles Kurwingie

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.

Published June 1992

Why Craftwork Does Not Compute

Feature

Alan Roberts

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........

Published June 1992

Yurundiali - Reasons for Optimism

Feature

Janelle Boyd

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.

Published June 1992