Saturday 5 December 2009

"Taking Time" exhibition in Birmingham
















Taking Time:Craft and the Slow Revolution
(Waterhall, Birmingham, then touring) is an interesting project. The curation and planning is very transparent, as described on website
http://www.takingtime.org/ and blog http://www.makingslowrevolution.wordpress.com/

















Neil Brownsword, "Salvage Series"(detail), 2005
Ceramic and industrial archaeology (Crafts March/April 2008).


For me this exhibition is about makers exploring everyday objects and their place in our psyche. Neil Broadsword casts remnants of the lost Stoke pottery culture in porcelain, Amy Houghton explores our relationship with historical textiles and other objects and David Gates how everyday furniture shapes our space and assumptions, to give a few examples.














Amy Houghton, "One centimetre is a little less than half-an-inch." Stop frame animation of Dovecote Tapestry weaving records.
(Photo by Amy Houghton). (Exhibition catalogue)


Associated with this is the idea of "place". Ken Eastman and Dawn Youll investigate how a place is created, quoting this passage:

"When a place is found it is found somewhere on the frontier between nature and art. It is like a hollow in the sand within which the frontier has been wiped out. The place of the painting begins in this hollow. Begins with a practice, withsomething being done by the hands, and the hands then seeking the approval of the eye, until the whole body is involved in the hollow. Then there's a chance of it becoming a place. A slim chance." John Berger, (2001), The Shape of a Pocket, Bloomsbury, p. 29.



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