IC:Innovative Craft Blog

Thinking of India…

Posted Thursday 11 February 2010, 03:22pm

Humayans Tomb, Delhi

The Thar Desert and camel

Remembering India is constant at the moment.  For those who haven’t already had 4 hours of holiday snaps and excited chat, I was lucky enough to spend 3 weeks traveling in Delhi and Rajasthan over Xmas, New Year, which I found inspiring, unsettling and wonderful in turn. Craft followed me everywhere – the intricate saddles of the camels we were riding in the Thar desert reminded me of the wonderful Peter Collingwood book, ‘The Maker’s Hand, A Close Look at Textile Structures’ (ISBN 1-85725-134-2).  A fascinating market celebrating hand-weaving in the centre of Mehrengarh Fort in Jodphur linked me straight back to Dovecot Studios – although Douglas and his team haven’t yet dug a sandpit to sit in to weave!  The carved stone screens in the magnificent Rajput palaces cast mesmerising patterns of light and colour across stone floors (as some 40 images show!)– which reminded me of Jo Barker’s brilliantly coloured tapestries inspired by Cairo which were on show in Follow A Thread.  I had a go at Hand Block Printing in the Anokhi Museum; got seduced by the different cutting techniques of sapphires and rubies in the shops of Muslim stone cutters in Jaipur.  Even wandering round a remote Jain temple site in Ossian, I found a craft familiar.  The British jeweller Ruth Tomlinson (whose current work is on show courtesy of Bishopsland at Dovecot) hailed me from behind a carved stone elephant.  She was traveling with the furniture designer Gareth Neal and (once we had overcome the confusion of strange meetings) they asked me whether I was traveling for work.  I stressed that this was strictly holiday, but on reflection I suppose the answer is not that simple…………

Amanda

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Down, out, up and up

Posted Thursday 21 January 2010, 03:02pm

Steam Shoes (detail) by Craig Mitchell

It’s almost the last week of January and already Christmas seems a very long time ago.  For those of you with a keen eye on the Twitter feed you may have caught an insight into everything that goes on behind the scenes over the last couple of weeks.  With Amanda in India (more of that in another blog) for the Christmas period and then down in London to set-up a new exhibition at the Jerwood Space, it was left to me to steer the IC exhibitions in the right directions.

Follow A Thread had to come down and be shipped out to the Harley Gallery in Nottinghamshire where it will spend the next two and a bit months in their lovely spaces and while it was travelling south, Taking Time was travelling north (luckily the weather had abated by now).  Luckily this transit period allowed us to make the South Gallery good again and prepare the storage spaces for the touring show’s packaging.

However, just before Taking Time went up we also had delivery of work from the makers at Edinburgh Ceramic Studio for Frontroom Showcase and I had to poke my toe into the world of curation (albeit on a small scale) for the first time. Having been down to Coburg House and seen all the items I had all the knowledge I could have, but I don’t think anything quite prepares you for that moment when you unwrap them and see them side-by-side with the colours playing with one another and the bright lights casting strange shadows.  There are photos up on the Frontroom Showcase page and also on our new Facebook page.

Then came the slow process of piecing together Taking Time.  Having seen it in Birmingham and with the time to reflect on all the pieces it could have been a lot worse, but in it’s entirety filling the whole South Gallery it did seem a bit daunting with the nagging question ‘where is it all going to go?’ being applicable to the pieces and the packaging.  You can see a brief overview of the exhibition through photos on the Taking Time event page and again through our Facebook page.

Up next at Dovecot is the Bishopsland silversmithing and jewellery show with upwards of 60 pieces… I now have a much greater understanding of what goes into these things so I offer them all my best wishes.

Nick

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Image/Craft

Posted Monday 14 December 2009, 03:07pm

Tord Boontje and his Cut Here tattoo product for Chi Ha Paura...? (2005); photo by Angela Moore

We talk about cross disciplinary work often too blithely.  So often it doesn’t quite hit the mark. But when I saw this exhibition, I had that tingly sense of aha, this is it.  It made completely makes sense for the practice of one discipline to be seen through the eyes and ears of another.  Craft and the act of making objects is such a hands on, touch oriented process and often experience that you become so connected with the object and its making that you cant ‘see’ it properly.  Good craft objects have an intimacy that that can be mesmerizing, and personal; that sometimes to tell the story of that deep relationship needs a bit of distance.

We usually use words and they really help, but these photographs and this connection between maker-object/process – camera-photographer, has opened a window of understanding and clarity.  I fell in love with Tord Boontje’s flowers at a Craft Council exhibition many years ago.  I was a little jealous when it became so available through Habitat but it meant I could visit it regularly.  To see him working, with the designs on his body as well as the wallpaper, with the inspiration of a few bottles of beer with friends just left, and a lightbulb with none of his flowers on his, is deeply reassuring.

Each of the photos has a similar effect – I understand why I like the work so much in each one.  I get more of the subtleties by the ability to see through the thoughtful skilled eyes of another – sometimes it isn’t just the objects of course, sometimes it is the way of making, that is so engaging, so human, so personal, so driven/clear/ - they tell human truths.  And there is nothing more fulfilling to see feel hear know than that….

Roanne

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Meaning and imagery in ‘Follow a Thread’

Posted Wednesday 25 November 2009, 04:41pm

Anna Ray, Knot; photo by Anna Pettigrew

Anna Ray, Saw; photo by Hyjdla Kosaniuk

When Amanda invited me to include my work in an exhibition of tapestry, I was delighted to participate. I studied for five years in the Tapestry Department at Edinburgh College of Art under the direction of Maureen Hodge and then went on to teach there for another six years. I now live and work just outside of London and have just had a baby.

The series of hand embroideries entitled ‘In the Garden’ was completed in 2006 with the launch of a publication, and was produced with SAC funding. The project was initially inspired by my own collection of domestic embroideries and research at the V&A. In 2004 I was artist in residence at Winterbourne Botanic Garden, University of Birmingham, where I made dozens of drawings and took hundreds of photographs. In the past, I had steered away from traditional embroidery motifs such as flowers and gardens, and more often subverted the medium; making stitched work with depictions of uncomfortable personal narratives. I decided that it would be a challenge to refer back to those traditional motifs. Could I find meaning in that kind of tranquil imagery?

I worked outside during the residency, observing changes in the garden, looking closely at the roses which were going over, and watching the gardeners work; pulling old trees out of the ground, and turning the earth. The weather was turbulent; there were storms, rain that flooded and thunder that rolled over my head. Unlike the inert foliage in the embroideries that I had collected, the garden was in flux. There was so much change occurring in me at that time, and within the nature I was observing, that the inner and outer worlds collided in my drawings. You can view the embroideries, photographs and drawings from the residency on my website – www.annaray.co.uk

During this year’s Edinburgh Art Festival I exhibited with STAR* (Scottish Tapestry Artists Regrouped) in ‘This is Now – From Drawing to Contexture’ where I showed my large-scale textile work ‘Knot’. My next major exhibition will be a two-person show with Maureen Hodge, ‘Maker and Mentor - two distinct voices’, which we propose to tour.

Anna Ray

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The lost weekend

Posted Monday 16 November 2009, 12:48pm

Flared Bowl by Thomas Hoadley

Leaning Series by Dan Stafford

As many of you will have read in January we are having a Craftspace touring exhibition called Taking Time: Craft and the Slow Revolution at the Dovecot building, so a few weekends ago myself, Amanda and David Weir took the train down to Birmingham to see the private view.  A very long and drawn out train journey it must be said, but with some stunning scenery along the south-east Scotland coast and then the dramatic entrance into England across the Tweed – quite a way to return to England for me having not been down for 3 months.  I would be interested in doing the journey we did as our return in the daytime as it snaked through the Pennines and the Lake District – Oxenholme The Lake District railway station name just conjures a great image, a shame it was pitch black yet only half 5 when we stopped there!

It was lovely to spend some time getting to know the artists involved in the Taking Time exhibition (and there are a lot) and putting some faces to email correspondences both from artists and from Craftspace.  It was only as I said to Neil Brownsword, ‘I’m very familiar with your face’, that I realised how much like a stalker I may sound – luckily I was able to explain my familiarity as his picture is featured in our Image/Craft exhibition – phew!

On the Saturday we went off in our different directions to see friends, relatives and, in my case, people I worked with and grew-up with – Amanda to Coventry to see the wonderful cathedral and me to Worcester to visit the Gallery at Bevere, where, shameless self-promotion time, some of my paintings are being sold.  In amongst the usual craft and art I came across a few Fran Priest boxes and some ceramics by Will Levi Marshall, which let me put work to familiar names, and then I saw some stunning pieces by an American, Thomas Hoadley (pictured above).  If I had the money I think I would have bought something… c’est la vie.  There were some very interesting pieces by Dan Stafford (also pictured above) and Vicky Shaw that I was particularly taken with.

And then it was time to come back to Dovecot… so I seemed to loose the weekend through the professional danger of spending time looking at interesting craft only to come back to work and a host of craft, images and objects again on the Monday!

Nick

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