IC:Innovative Craft Blog

Image/Craft

Posted Monday 14 December 2009, 03:07pm

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